March 1, 2002
Former Panther faces death in
Atlanta murder trial
Andrew Kobayashi
STAFF WRITER
Shouts. Shots.
Sneakers and blood hit the
ground running. One officer
dead, the other wounded.
It is now two years, a re
canted third-party confession,
tainted evidence, and contra
dictory testimonies later. The
accused stands facing death if
twelve consciences decide he is
to suffer the fate of a cop killer.
On the stand is the ac
cused, Jamil Al-Amin. He is a
58-year-old Muslim cleric once
known as black militant H. Rap
Brown.
On March 16, 2000, two
Atlanta deputies went to a store
that Al-Amin owned to serve
him an arrest warrant that was
due to his failure to make a
court appearance on the charge
of theft by receiving stolen
property.
The deputies were greeted
with gunfire from a man shel
tering himself behind a black
Mercedes-Benz. Deputy Rich
ard Kinchen was fatally
wounded and died in the hospi
tal the next day. The other of
ficer survived to report that the
gunman had been wounded, and
that there was a blood trail.
Dogs, Helicopters, and
SWAT teams followed the trail
TT TI y TTTI Junichiro
Who s Who: Koizumi
: :
■k jfl
—Wl wHSnH
In the know
In his third attempt to run tor presi
dent, he was finally elected under the Liberal Democratic Party in 2001. He holds
a liberal position on many issues and is working to turn around Japan's current
recession. His motto is a quote from The Analects of Con fucius, 'The most funda
mental principle of politics is trust."
World & Nation
until it went cold in a vacant,
west Atlanta house. On March
20, Al-Amin was arrested with
out a scratch on him, 175 Miles
away from Atlanta in Lowndes
County, Alabama.
The trial is now underway,
and testimony of the surviving
officer, Aldranon English, is
bringing more confusion than
clarity. While charges of racism
still persist, they have been
slightly muted by English being
black also.
English told investigators in
the days following the incident
that the man who shot him had
gray eyes. He repeated the de
scription twice more, and was
angered when investigators
hinted that he was wrong about
the man's eye color.
A month later, English
changed his story. He now said
the gunman wore yellow-tinted
glasses at night.
This was the first of many
inconsistencies pointed out by
defense attorney Jack Martin. In
one account, English said he ap
proached the suspect. In an
other, English said he never ad
vanced, shielding himself with
the open door of the police car.
In varying versions of the story.
English described the suspect
as wearing different-color hats.
English said he had shot
the suspect at close range and
The Guilfordian
wounded him, but "Al-Amin
had no wounds when he was
arrested and the bullet casings
at the scene suggested that
English shot from a further dis
tance than what he had said,"
Martin said.
English, the prosecution's
only witness, identified Al-
Amin from a photo line-up soon
after he underwent surgery and
had been given 4 milligrams of
morphine. Defense lawyers ar
gue that Atlanta Police coached
English to identify Al-Amin.
The growing number of Al-
Amin supporters claim "mount
ing evidence" that he is a vic
tim of governmental grudge. In
1995, He was accused of aggra
vated assault after a man
claimed Al-Amin had shot him.
The man later recanted and
said he was pressured by At
lanta authorities to identify him
as the shooter.
In fact, the 58-year-old
whom neighbors describe as "a
man who tried to clean up the
streets of drugs and prostitu
tion," has been arrested for
murder 15 times in the past 20
years, according to Ed Brown.
Amin's brother, and the family
spokesman, "On every single
occasion, either someone else
has confessed, or the state
hasn't had enough evidence to
bring an innocent man to trial."
Gabriel Fertman
STAFF WRITER
Name: Junichiro Koizumi
Also known as: Jun-Chan
Position: Prime Minister of Japan
Koizumi was born Jan. 8. 1942. in
Yokosuka City. Kanagawa, Japan. He was
educated at Keio University and graduated
with a degree in economics in 1967.
He has been involved in politics for
most of his life, starting out as a secretary
to a member of the House of Representa
tives and working his way up the Liberal
Democratic Party over the past thirty
years. He held many different posts dur
ing this time: the Chairman of Finances
in 1980, Chairman of National Organiza
tion Committee in 1989. and most re
cently, the Minister of Health and Welfare
in 1996.
WWW.KRTCAMPUS.COM
Local
News
Carthage
Moore County Sheriff's
Deputy Randall Butler shot and
killed one soldier and left an
other wounded last Tuesday. I s '
Lt. Tallas Tomeny was killed and
Sgt. Stephen Phelps was
wounded. Both men were in the
final exercise of their Special
Forces testing. They were riding
in a pick-up truck driven by a
civilian participant. Butler had
seen the truck pass twice and felt
uneasy about its occupants - one
of the soldiers was crouched
down in the back. When the
deputy stopped the pick-up, he
saw a large duffel bag and a
weapon in the truck bed. That
is when Butler ordered all three
men out of the vehicle. Unfor
tunately, the soldiers thought
that this was part of their train
ing and tried to grab the weapon.
Butler fired, wounding Sgt.
Phelps and killing Ist1 st Lt. Tomeny.
Lexington
Seven people have already
filed to run for sheriff in
Davidson County. Gerald Hege,
the current sheriff, is expected
to file on Monday, and try to win
a third four-year term. Oppo
nents feel that this year they may
have a chance to beat Hege due
to the bad publicity his office has
been getting lately. In the 1998
primary, Hege towered over his
adversaries with 79 percent of
the vote and later won the elec
tion with 57 percent.
El kin
Two men died last Thurs.
from suffocation inside a grain
silo. Randv Tony Carpenter, 48,
of Dayton, Va., and Justin Curtis
Mines, 19, of Singers Glen. Va.
died around 10:30 a.m. at the
Wayne Farms Poultry Co. feed
mill, five miles east of Elkin. The
men had been inside of the silo
patching holes in the bin's metal
walls when mill workers opened
a chute to lill a delivery truck.
The mill workers were unaware
that the men were working in
side the silo. Both men had been
lowered into 60-foot-tall silo by
rope, but for some reason had
taken off their harnesses once
inside. As the grain emptied,
both men were pulled under. It
took rescue workers two hours
to free their bodies.
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