January 9, 2024 • 38 mins
Under more scrutiny, some of the prosecution’s evidence breaks down, and a man who for years has been confessing to the shooting attracts renewed attention.
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Speaker 1 (00:02):
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Speaker 2 (00:17):
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Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Campsite Media, How far are you willing to go? Because
like most of the people definitely never talked to me,
they never talk to people that know me. So now
they have what they think is the truth and they
have run with that.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In November of twenty twenty one, Johnny Kaufman got a
call from a man in federal prison. Johnny is the
lead producer of this podcast, and the call came to
him months before he convinced me to help him do
more reporting, to host the podcast and make the story
of my own. Johnny had been filing open records requests
looking for problems with the Maam Jimial's prosecution and talking
(01:25):
to this man in prison. An interesting man, a man who,
over the course of his life, has gone by at
least three names, Otis Jackson, Silas Mohammad, and James Santos.
I'm going to call him Otis Jackson. On the phone,
Otis was serious, didn't really joke much, and he sounded
(01:46):
like a smart guy. He said violence was a part
of his childhood, and he moved around a lot as
a kid.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I floated from family member of family members of different people.
You know, I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
When Otis finished high school, he worked in construction, but
before long he decided he can make more money hustling.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I'm not a violent person, but I can get vin
and give. I'll put in a particular situation that's try
the reason, but sometime the goal is beyond reason.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Otis's rap sheet is long and goes back to at
least nineteen ninety one. He's been charged with battery, armed robbery,
credit card fraud, and grand theft auto. Right now, he's
in federal prison in the Midwest, set to get out
in a few years. Otis is forty nine, black, shaved
(02:45):
head at least in the photos we have, and he's
around five foot seven, he has some scars, there's a
dark mark on his forehead, a callous that some Muslims
get from praying otis. He brings us to another chapter
of this story, and in particular, to get another way
of thinking about and understanding the truth. I've encountered truths
(03:08):
that were tucked away just beyond my reach, and truths
that were wrapped up in coats of fiction. With this guy,
there was no secrecy or subterfuge or anything like that. Really,
it was the opposite. In fact, for more than twenty years,
he has been blasting at full volume that he is
the one who shot Deputies Ricky Keinchin and Algernon English,
(03:30):
but no one was really listening.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I've gotten away with murder for real. On some people say, man,
you get away with murder. I've literally gotten away with murder.
So yeah, I don't help all of it. It's not
like that these people are not aware. It's just that
they don't want to accept it because, you know, most
(03:55):
of the time, like most human beings, if we do
something wrong, we don't want to be told if we're wrong.
And they convicted the wrong guy and sit the wrong
guy to prison for life, for something that another guy needs.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
When you track Otis's story, it's not impossible that he
could have gone overlooked for years, ignored. Because someone confessing
to a murder willingly submitting themselves to at least a
long prison term and maybe even the death penalty. It
just seems weird, hard to believe until maybe it is
(04:32):
believed taken for truth by the right people. People with influence.
They recruit the power of big institutions, and what seemed
before like conventional wisdom is suddenly unsettled. So we had
to investigate Otis's story for ourselves because it might get
a man, Jamil out of prison. From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV,
(04:57):
and iHeart podcasts, This is Radic I'm Mosey's Secret, Episode
six Confession. At the time of the shootout in the
(05:26):
West End March of two thousand, Otis Jackson was on
parole for a battery conviction he had picked up in Nevada.
He'd allegedly shot a guy after an argument over a dog.
Otis was allowed to stay at his mother's house in
Atlanta because he was wearing an ankle monitor. Each day
after work, Otis was supposed to go straight home to
his mom's. Basically, he had a curfew. But a few
(05:49):
weeks after the shootout and after a man Jamille was
arrested for it, Otis was sent back to Nevada for
violating his parole, and he was incarcerated at the Clark
County Detention Center in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
When I got back in Nevada, I immediately called the
authorities there, and actually, to be honest, they didn't want
to hear it. I called maybe about eight times.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Finally an FBI agent went out to the prison to
listen to what Otis had to say, and he confessed
to shooting Deputy Kenjin and Deputy English. This was months
before man Jamil's trial would start in Earnest.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I just said it, little man, you guys have the
wrong guy in jail, you know, so I don't want
anybody in jail or in treason for something that I know.
The rested the wrong guy. So here's what happened. And
he was definitely not interested in that. He told me,
any man, we got over the shake case here with Jamil,
so there's no need for you to be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
After Otis confessed, he was moved to solitary confinement. The
guards put a sign on his door that said cop killer,
and they started to get giving him a hard time.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
He was playing with the food who called me cop killer.
Sometime they would let me out of the shower. Sometimes
they wouldn't, and when they did, sometime they would put
me in a shower and locked me in a shower,
and I would be in handcuff in that shower for
hours without being able to actually shower because I'm still
in handcuff.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So y'a. But man, listen, A lot of crazy stuff happened.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
A few months after he spoke to the FBI, Otis
wrote a statement, not sure if he put it in
the mail or just handed it off to a guard,
but it said, I Otis Milton Jackson was just trying
to help a brother, not knowing it would give me
the case. I loved Jamil, but I did not do anything.
I killed no one, and Jamil killed no one. I'm
(07:45):
so sorry for making the FBI feel as if I
did this. Robert McBurney, the lead prosecutor in a man
Jamial's case, he learned of Otis's confession, and because of
procedural rules around potentially exculpatory evidence like this, McBurnie had
to tell the defense team Otis's retraction just a few
months after he officially confessed. That would be a problem
(08:08):
for the defense if they called and to testify. But
Jack Martin, a man Jamil's lead defense lawyer, he suggested
he wasn't too concerned about that. Otis said he withdrew
his confession because he'd been thrown in solitary confinement, a
decision that a jury could make sense of the investigator
for the defense what Tani Taijimba he interviewed Otis. Martin
(08:30):
remembered the report that what Tani gave the defense team.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He you know, described Otis Jackson as giving us a
consistent story. But you never know about somebody where, you know.
I don't know whether believe him or not, but that's
what his story makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Not sure whether he's telling the truth, but the story
makes sense. That would have to be good enough. Remember,
they only needed a reasonable doubt. Martin was ready to
call Otis as a witness, but then Robert McBurney, the
prosecutor he got in touch with Martin.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
McBurney told me, listen, Jack, he was on probation at
the time. He had an acco monitor on him, and
we can prove that he wasn't in the West End
area that night.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
McBurney said he had data from Otis's ankle monitor that
showed Otis was at home at his mom's house and
it would have been physically impossible for him to have
shot the deputies.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
And he said, I just hope you call him because
we'll be able to blow him out of the water
with that ankle bracelet. I accepted that as being I
didn't think McBurney would lie to me about that. I
accepted that, and I thought, well, this is a death
penloty case. If we call some witness, it blows up
on us in the stand. That's going to HURTSS on
the death penalty if we have to go there.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
If the defense called Otis and then the prosecution proved
he was lying, the jury wouldn't trust the defense team
during the sentencing phase when they were asking the jury
to spare a man Jamil's life.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
So I made the decision or we made a decision
not to call him.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The jury never heard Otis's confession, and AmAm Jamil was
convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After a mam
Jamil's initial appeals failed in the Georgia Supreme Court. His
lawyers filed a habeas corpus appeal, the final shot at
least to the courts to get him out of prison.
(10:28):
The legal team got a deposition from Otis, who was
out of solitary at this point, and he again confessed
to the shooting under oath. In February of two thousand
and seven, after a Mam Jamil had already spent about
five years in solitary confinement, there was a hearing focused
on the possibility that Otis shot the deputies. It was
(10:48):
in Tattnall County, Georgia, where a Mamjmial was being held
at Reidsville Prison. At this hearing, a founder of the
company that made the technology uses a part of Otis's
angle monitor to fight. He said the data actually did
not show definitively that Otis was at home at the
time of the shootout. This was big. It meant that
(11:09):
Jack Martin had bad information when he decided against calling
Otis to the stand during the trial. It meant Otis
could have been anywhere the night of March sixteenth, two thousand,
including in the West End, behind the trigger of a
semi automatic rifle. So with all this information in mind,
when Otis told my producer Johnny his story about what
(11:30):
happened that night in the West End, we had to listen.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I went there. I went to work first, and I
found out that I wasn't on the schedule to work.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That was like a free pass for Otis to do
whatever he wanted that day, under the guys that he
was working to be out in the world at least
before he had to me back home. In the evening,
Otis decided to run some errands.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I was moving some guns from one place to another
and a bulletproof ess. So I'll put the guns in
the trunk and I put I had one gun on me,
a nine millimeis, and I drove to the West End community.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Otis said that at the time he was one of
the leaders of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, an organization
law enforcement would call it a gang that was founded
in Chicago. Back in the day. Otis was planning to
get a branch of the Vice Lords going in Atlanta,
and while he was running errands on March sixteenth, his
plan was to visit a Maam Jamil to give him
a heads up. The Western mass did under a man
(12:34):
Jamil had armed security patrols, and AmAm Jamil had developed
a reputation over the years for pushing out drug dealers.
Otis just wanted to stop by to say, hey, we're
going to be moving into the area, but we don't
want any business with your community. Otis said he parked
his car outside the mass did and the brothers told
him AmAm Jamial wasn't around. He stuck around for prayer
(12:56):
and he chatted with the brothers afterward. Actually, he realized
it was getting late, and so he walked across the
street to a Man Jamil's store, hoping he'd may be
shown up, But the lights were off and the doors
were locked. As Otis was walking away, the deputies pulled up.
They got out and told Otis to put up his hands.
(13:20):
Otis said he tried to explain himself, said he wasn't
breaking into the store or anything, that he was looking
for the owner, but one of the deputies had already
drawn his gun and was screaming out orders.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So it's like two half of mails. Either one of
us are back and now, and before I knew it, it
had just escalated. I knew I had a gun on me,
I'm all house arrest, I got so this is gonna
send me right back to prison. It just wasn't happen,
and I did what I felt that I had to
do at the time. I pulled out my gun and fired.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Both deputies fired back, and Otis was hitting the arm.
He ran to his car, which was parked across the
street with a trunk full of guns, remember, and he
grabbed an M fourteen, a semi automatic rifle. Otis said
that Kenchin was being more aggressive than English, who was
calling for help on his radio. So Otis went hard
(14:14):
after Kenchin, who tried to take cover behind the black
Mercedes that was parked on the street. Then Kenchin fell,
Otis walked over to him.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I remember him telling me that he had a child
and he was explaining to me, man, don't do it.
You know, I got a little girl, and he was
telling the other stuff. And at the time, I mean,
you just shot me. You don't understand, like you know,
we don't you know, we don't flit to the point
of no retire. Now you just you know, shot me.
I'm sitting up here a bloody mess. I'm bleeding on
(14:43):
the head and also so I'm thinking that I'll shot
in the head. But it wasn't a bullet at all.
It was a piece of land from the car that
had large in the side of my head. So but
I didn't know it at the time. So I stood
over him and I shot him in the growing.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Otis said. He turned to find English and saw him
running away toward the field next to the mast Jit
and then shot and bloody. Amped up on adrenaline, Otis
forgot his car was there and started looking for help.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Well, you go through a situation like that, you know,
when you're shooting at people and people are shooting at you,
you can't be a little outside of you, said, I'm
not going to say out of a body's fan, but
you kind of get outside of yourself. So I got
a little confused for a second.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Eventually, Otis came back to his senses, he found his car,
and he drove home. This was a wild story, but
in some ways it made more sense than the story
we had heard about AmAm Jamil. Otis had a track
record of shooting people with little provocation. He was a hothead,
(15:53):
and he didn't have as much to lose as a
Mam Jamial. Still, something was definitely off about the guy
he'd pled guilty to writing letters to public officials threatening
to kill them unless they accepted his confession and freedom.
Ma'am Jamil, that's why he was in prison. But like
I said, some powerful people were convinced he was telling
(16:14):
the truth. It helped a Mam Jamil get access to
a new legal process that could potentially get him out
of prison. It took the judge seven years to reject
a Ma'am Jamil's habeas appeal, the one in Tattnall County, Georgia,
where it came out that the ankle monitor did not
prove Otis Jackson was at home during the shootout. The
(16:38):
judge rejected the appeal in twenty eleven. AmAm Jamil's lawyers
kept at it, though, appealing to higher courts. But I'll
just tell you now, all of those habeas appeals were rejected.
The odds of an inmate winning any type of release
on a habeas claim are very very slim. But then
(16:59):
in Yeahanuary of twenty twenty, almost two decades after the shootout,
a new path opened up for a Mam Jmial, new
hope for him and his supporters. The Fulton County DA
created something called the Conviction Integrity Unit, or the CiU.
(17:19):
It's a division within the prosecutor's office that examines cases
from the past looking for wrongful convictions that could be overturned.
When the civil rights legend Andrew Young wrote a letter
to the Fulton County DA claiming a Maam Jimial was innocent,
he sent it to the CiU. Specifically, Otis Jackson was
a focus of the letter. Young wrote that Otis matched
(17:41):
some eyewitnesses descriptions of the shooter. Otis was violating his
parole and so he had a motive for shooting the deputies.
He had ammunition at home that matched the ammunition used
during the shooting, and he had been convicted of violent
crimes in the past. It seems like Young's letter influenced
the Fulton County DA because we later learned the CiU
(18:03):
was reviewing a Ma'am Jamil's case and the ma'm Jamil
supporters in other corners. They focused on Otis, too, mounting
campaigns to try to convince big media organizations like CNN
to interview him. A coalition of twenty eight Muslim American
organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice that
also made Otis's confession a focus. But to convince the
(18:26):
DA's office or the courts, Otis's confession alone would never
be enough, especially after all these years. It wouldn't be
enough to convince me either. Any good journalists would want
to find corroboration for a bombshell like this, so we
set out to try to find people who Otis had
encountered or spoken to in the aftermath of the shooting.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I'm coming down from the durn them was now the situation.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That started in the When Otis returned to his mom's house,
the phone rang. A parole officer was calling to check
on him. Otis told the officer he was just getting
home from work, but the officer said he still had
to market as a violation. But Otis's mind was elsewhere.
He said he was in pain, bleeding from the gunshot wounds.
(19:13):
He called a neighbor, a nurse who lived across the street,
to come over and fix them up, and two other
women came to lend a hand. A bullet was lodged
in Otis's shoulder, and they extracted it stitched him up.
One of the women gave Otis some painkillers, but advill
or tile and all after a bullet wound. I'm thinking
this had to be excruciating.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Luckily for me, I just happened to know these people,
because if I had not, probably would have died.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The morning after the shootout, Otis said he gave all
the guns he had to his brother, told him he
didn't want them because he was on parole, and then
he called a reporter at a local TV station. Otis
was worried and Mam Jamil was going to be arrested
for the shooting.
Speaker 6 (19:58):
You got to understand when they when they start artist
saying that this guy did it and they were looking
for this they were looking for him. The first thing
that brought to my mind was, damn, man, they're about
to arrest the wrong person.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I don't want this guy to go to jail for
something I did. That's not right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
When the reporter showed up, Otis said he offered to
give him the bloody clothes he had worn during the shootout,
but the reporter said, look, if you do that, then
I'd have to turn them over to the police. Otis
didn't like that idea, so he didn't give the reporter
the clothes, but he still agreed to an interview. Meanwhile,
since Otis had violated his parole, law enforcement came to
(20:39):
search his house, and a few weeks later he was
shipped back to Nevada. So that's Otis's story of the
aftermath of the shooting. Plenty of leads to chase down right. First,
we went to the block where Otis was staying with
his mom back in March of two thousand and we
spoke to some of the neighbors. They confirmed that Otis's
(21:02):
mother lived there, but they didn't know any nurses who
lived nearby in two thousand. No corroboration there. Then we
got a transcription of an interview with Otis's brother. He said, nah,
Otis never gave me any guns. No corroboration there, But
maybe that's what anyone would say to protect a brother
who gave him a bunch of guns and then confess
to a murder that happened the night before. So next
(21:25):
we tracked down a recording in the local news segment
featuring Otis. One of the man Jamil supporters gave it
to us. They had been monitoring and recording TV news
after the shootout. You are watching eleven or five news
at Viberi as a suspect in the shootings of two deputies.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
By its extradition back to.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Georgia, old friends paint a different picture of a man
accused of murder.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
He took a community that was infested with prostitution and
drugs and drug dealers, and he cleaned it up. Good
evening again.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I'm de Otis goes by Silas. Muhammad in the segment
text at the bottom of the screen calls him a
friend of Alamine. From what we've heard, when Otis was
in Atlanta, he might have stopped by the mass jed
to mix a lot a few times, but a friend
of Alamine. That was probably local TV news stretching the
facts a bit. The story was set up to be
about someone close to AmAm Jamil and the Weston Masjid
(22:19):
who argued to Ma'am Jamil was a peaceful religious leader.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
I know that Jamil a Lamine did not shoot any
police officers that night.
Speaker 8 (22:30):
Would you put your hand on the Kuran and say that, yes,
Sir I would.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
Would you stake your life on him, yes, Sir I will.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The segment buried at the very end what I would
consider the most important information from the whole thing.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
Solace. Mohammad says that there are people in this community
who revere and respect and love Jamil Abdullah A Lamine,
and that there are people here who would do anything
to protect him, that includes shooting at Fulton County Sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Do you mark if silace, Mohammed says, Alameine didn't pull
the trigger, does he know who did?
Speaker 7 (23:02):
Well?
Speaker 8 (23:03):
I asked him that and he said he would not
answer for two reasons. He said he fears self incrimination
and he also respects the code of silence. But he
did say he hopes and expects that important information will
be revealed during the court process.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
We played this story back for the reporter he's retired now,
and he told us he didn't remember it. That's understandable.
A local TV reporter might do thousands of stories in
their career, and so we asked, did he remember Otis
telling him off the record and off camera that he
had been involved in a recent shooting. No, the reporter said,
(23:38):
and if Otis had told him that, he would have remembered.
When we asked Otis for his help corroborating his story,
asked him who we should try to talk to and
if he has suggestions for contacting them. He wasn't much help.
Too much time had passed. He said, you're not going
to get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
If I were in your shoes, I'll probably would scrap
this story and do something else, maybe a story on dogs,
you know, because.
Speaker 6 (24:05):
I'm bey honest man, like, you're not gonna have a
lot of people willing to talk about the murd of
a police officer.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I got a laugh out of that one. Yes, interviewing
folks about their dogs would be easier than what we're doing.
People are not especially willing to share information about a
murder they might be even tangentially connected to. But I
got the sense that Otis was communicating more than that.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Just believe me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
He seemed to be saying, this story could move mountains
if people only believed. Some things might work like that.
But journalism isn't one of them, and for the most part,
the legal system isn't either. We uncovered some glaring inconsistencies
between Otis's different accounts of what happened. On March sixteenth,
(24:54):
two thousand, The FBI interviewed Otis in Las Vegas, a
few months after the shoot. According to a summary of
the interview Otis had it all went down during the
day and Maam Jamil was there and when the deputies
pulled up, Otis jumped to his defense. There was a
fistfight and then the guns came out, but a Maam
Jamil didn't get involved. That's a different story than Otis's
(25:18):
other accounts, and the shootout definitely happened at night. I
just can't trust Otis, And while the Conviction Integrity Unit
or the courts they might at least consider his story,
I don't think they'll ever be able to trust him either.
Late in our reporting, we learned that in twenty nineteen,
(25:39):
in Florida, Otis was called to testify in a different
high profile murder trial over a Grizzly quadruple murder. He
had made another confession. The judge ordered that a psychologist
evaluate Otis and look into his mental health history. According
to the psychologist's report back in two thousand and six,
Otis showed no symptoms of distress, but in two thousand
(26:02):
and eight he made repeated requests for mental health treatment,
and when he was placed in solitary confinement, he began
to report auditory hallucinations. He was hearing voices. Otis was
adamant he was not mentally ill, but a different psychologist
said his symptoms were consistent with bipolar disorder and delusional disorder.
(26:23):
The psychologists who evaluated Otis wrote that Otis's claims about
his past were quote highly suspect, but that he had
the capacity to testify in the Florida case. He is
a highly intelligent individual, the report said. One time, when
I was trying to wrap my head around all of this,
I just let my imagination run wild. I started thinking
(26:45):
about how some people who hear voices say they're experiencing
a broader reality through their mind's ear that the rest
of us can't sense. And I thought, Wow, what if
Otis slash Silas Mohammad slash James Santos keeps infesting the
crimes he was there for, but not really there for
until And this is where I really let my imagination
(27:06):
run wild. By some epiphany, Otis learns to control his
powers and emerges from the darkest prisons as a force
for good. Otis Jackson is a comic book superhero cool
origin story. Right, No, it doesn't make a lick of sense,
but he got me thinking there might be a place
in this story about AmAm Jamil for a more intentional
(27:29):
use of imagination. A ma'am Jamil was a magnet for
people who couldn't distinguish between made up stories and what
was happening before their eyes, whose fantasies would float out
into the world and have very real consequences. Otis is
maybe the most extreme example, but he wasn't the only one.
If I can't escape this mythological realm, maybe I should
(27:49):
learn to play with it. A departure from the realm
of journalism, for sure, but maybe it would do some good.
But for now, back to reality. Otis responded to one
of our letters a few months ago, but he hasn't
called us in months. He never came out and told
(28:11):
Johnny I'm done with these interviews, but on one of
their later calls, Otis said.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
This, I'm to a point, man, where really I'm kind
of I'm kind of tired of talking about it. For real.
I've got to a point where I feel like it
is what it is. Man. I got a release date.
They're gonna let me out of prison, so I don't
really see the need to, you know, keep repeating something
over and over and over and over and over again,
(28:37):
especially where when there's no real benefit for me. So
why I keep doing that?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I do think that a part of Otis really believes
what he's saying, and for some reason, the story took
holding a fragment of his personality. His reality is so
real for him he do almost anything to make others
see it. But after hours of listening to Otis's voice,
I wanted to get back to the documents, and in
the thousands of pages we had, there were a few
(29:11):
that I needed to spend more time with. Years ago,
a man Jamil recounted his version of what happened the
night of the shootout, and I turned there next. At
the time of this recording, a mam Jamil Elamine is
(29:34):
seventy nine years old and he's still in prison, a
federal prisoner in Arizona, equipped to provide medical care. He
got out of Adax, Florence because he was sick. It
may be obvious by now, but this feels like the
time to say it. I wasn't able to interview him.
(29:54):
I wrote to him, but I didn't hear back. AmAm
Jamil didn't testify during his murder trial, but during one
of his appeals the one in Tattneau County back in
two thousand and seven. He gave his account under oath
and on the record of what happened on March sixteenth,
(30:16):
two thousand. AmAm Jamil said that earlier in the day,
hours before the shootout, he had a run in with
some young folks in the neighborhood who were selling drugs.
AmAm Jamil hated drugs, hated them since his days as
Rat Brown. He saw them as a scourge on the
(30:36):
black community and part of a government conspiracy to keep
up potentially rebellious population sedated. During his testimony, he said
the western neighborhood near the Maschiff had been infested with
drugs at least until the brothers led by him started
exerting their influence, and this had made him some enemies.
As evening approached on the night of the shooting, a
(30:57):
man Jamil had dinner with his family at Red Life. Afterward,
he wanted to check the mail, so he drove back
to the West End and parked his car near the
Masjed in the store, He got out of the car
and he was in the empty field next to the
mass Jed, walking towards the back entrance when he said
he heard two pistol shots and then many more rounds
of gunfire. A Maam Jamil didn't look back. He said
(31:22):
he went into safety mode, thinking the drug dealers were
after him. He got low and ran behind the mass Jed.
Then he kept running through the neighborhood he knew well.
He went in a loop behind houses, through backyards and
cuts until he arrived back at the store that's across
the street from the mass Jed. The gunfire had stopped
and he didn't see anyone else around. He got in
(31:43):
his Mercedes and he drove off. AmAm Jamil said he
initially intended to drive home, but then thinking the drug
dealers were after him, he decided and said to go
to Lowndes County, Alabama, the location of a smaller Muslim
community he founded. An attorney for the state arguing against
a Ma'am Jamial's appeal asked why he didn't call the police,
(32:05):
and Maam Jamial said the mask Jed had a quote
security arrangement. Instead of calling the police, the first people
he would have spoken to would have been meant on
the mass Jed security force, who were supposed to be
on duty that night. Over the years. This is not
one that has haunted you or that you think about
(32:27):
or no. Brett Zembric, the Atlanta Police Department detective who
investigated the shootout, he was one of the first people
I interviewed. A lot of what Brett said was in
my head when I reviewed a Mam Jamial's testimony.
Speaker 9 (32:40):
I don't have any doubts about this case. I never
had any doubts about this case. It was a case that,
you know, these guys got shot. They just happened to
be wearing badges and guns, and this is who shot him,
and he just happened to be someone that had some notariety.
There's absolutely no no thought whatsoever that there's somebody else involved,
(33:03):
that there's you know, a conspiracy to get a trip
who wins there? I mean, what was he doing that
was so you know, dramatic that we needed to get
him off the street at any cost.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I don't get it.
Speaker 9 (33:15):
So, you know, based on what I know about the incident,
what I've been told, what I see, and what the
test results are, I have no doubt in my mind
that you know, Jamil all means shot these two deputies
killed one of them. I don't think for a minute
that he needs another trial or you know, another chance
(33:39):
at you know, doing good. I think what happened happened,
and the punishment fits a crime, and I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
He's doing the time. When I left Brett's house, I thought,
I can't really argue as much of what he said.
It became even harder for me to believe that a
man Jamil had a confer with drug dealers that ultimately
blossomed into a vast conspiracy, a conspiracy that's been kept
secret all these years. But after I looked more closely
(34:10):
at the trial transcripts and the documents we got from
the DA's office, and after I talked to people who
were part of the mass did and who lived in
the West End, I became convinced that there was more
to what happened that night than what was revealed in
court or even in all the documents we'd obtained. When
I asked the man Jamil's defense attorneys, Tony Axim and
Jack Martin for their theories of what happened, it only
(34:32):
confirmed my suspicion. Here's Axom, I can't tell you that
I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 10 (34:39):
And I said, there with a smile. I have no theories,
have no theories, can't answer. I don't know the answer
question I wish I did. My memory is totally blank.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
That might be one of the most entertaining NOE commet
responses that I've ever gotten in my career. Jack Martin
was more helpful.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
I seriously think that it's possible, not just possible, but
likely that al I mean was confronted by these officers
and there was a lot of yelling and screaming, and
that somebody is supporting the community. Maybe it's Otis Jacks,
and maybe somebody else saw that and thought all means
(35:28):
in trouble and did something stupid. All I mean was
reluctant to present a case forcely that somebody else did.
He was trying to protect that person. He thought that
(35:48):
would involve him, and it would some extent, but it
would it would defeat the murder charge. So I understood that.
So I don't think we pressed that as hard as
we perhaps should have, but we let the jury sort
of linger out there over that issue.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
We let the jury sort of linger out there over
that issue. Martin said, I'm not bringing in all this
information from Martin. It's just another way to raise doubt
about whether a man, Jimial shot the two deputies. It's
something I've heard on and off the record that maybe
someone else was there, that the West End was the
kind of neighborhood where people confronted trouble with guns blazing.
(36:34):
Everybody knew he was a dangered person, and my friend said, Hey,
what hell you do.
Speaker 7 (36:40):
Don't get in the call with that motherfucker because they
know you'll come at when a murricane.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
That's on the next episode of Radical. Radical is a
(37:08):
production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. Radical
was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and me Mosey's Secret.
Johnnykauffman is our senior producer. Shepa Joseph is our associate producer.
Editing by Eric Benson, Johnny Couffman, Emily Martinez and Matt Cher.
(37:28):
Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch, and Layla Dos.
Original music by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray of
Organized Noise, Sound design and mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording
by Ewan Leed trem Ewen and Sheba Joseph. Campside Media's
operations team is Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Elijah Papes, Destiny Dingle,
(37:50):
and Sabina Merra. The executive producers at Campside Media are
Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For
Tenderfoot TV, executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay.
The executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are Matt Frederick and
Alex Williams, with additional support from Trevor Young,
The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely
those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast,
and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or their employees.
This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be
suitable for everyone listening to.
Speaker 2 (00:17):
Discretion is advised. Radical is released every Tuesday and brought
to you absolutely free, but if you want to add
free listening and early access to next week's episode, subscribe
to tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out tenderfootplus dot com.
Enjoy the episode.
Speaker 3 (00:42):
Campsite Media, How far are you willing to go? Because
like most of the people definitely never talked to me,
they never talk to people that know me. So now
they have what they think is the truth and they
have run with that.
Speaker 2 (01:03):
In November of twenty twenty one, Johnny Kaufman got a
call from a man in federal prison. Johnny is the
lead producer of this podcast, and the call came to
him months before he convinced me to help him do
more reporting, to host the podcast and make the story
of my own. Johnny had been filing open records requests
looking for problems with the Maam Jimial's prosecution and talking
(01:25):
to this man in prison. An interesting man, a man who,
over the course of his life, has gone by at
least three names, Otis Jackson, Silas Mohammad, and James Santos.
I'm going to call him Otis Jackson. On the phone,
Otis was serious, didn't really joke much, and he sounded
(01:46):
like a smart guy. He said violence was a part
of his childhood, and he moved around a lot as
a kid.
Speaker 3 (01:53):
I floated from family member of family members of different people.
You know, I mean.
Speaker 4 (02:00):
Cool.
Speaker 3 (02:03):
You know.
Speaker 2 (02:05):
When Otis finished high school, he worked in construction, but
before long he decided he can make more money hustling.
Speaker 3 (02:13):
I'm not a violent person, but I can get vin
and give. I'll put in a particular situation that's try
the reason, but sometime the goal is beyond reason.
Speaker 2 (02:25):
Otis's rap sheet is long and goes back to at
least nineteen ninety one. He's been charged with battery, armed robbery,
credit card fraud, and grand theft auto. Right now, he's
in federal prison in the Midwest, set to get out
in a few years. Otis is forty nine, black, shaved
(02:45):
head at least in the photos we have, and he's
around five foot seven, he has some scars, there's a
dark mark on his forehead, a callous that some Muslims
get from praying otis. He brings us to another chapter
of this story, and in particular, to get another way
of thinking about and understanding the truth. I've encountered truths
(03:08):
that were tucked away just beyond my reach, and truths
that were wrapped up in coats of fiction. With this guy,
there was no secrecy or subterfuge or anything like that. Really,
it was the opposite. In fact, for more than twenty years,
he has been blasting at full volume that he is
the one who shot Deputies Ricky Keinchin and Algernon English,
(03:30):
but no one was really listening.
Speaker 3 (03:34):
I've gotten away with murder for real. On some people say, man,
you get away with murder. I've literally gotten away with murder.
So yeah, I don't help all of it. It's not
like that these people are not aware. It's just that
they don't want to accept it because, you know, most
(03:55):
of the time, like most human beings, if we do
something wrong, we don't want to be told if we're wrong.
And they convicted the wrong guy and sit the wrong
guy to prison for life, for something that another guy needs.
Speaker 2 (04:10):
When you track Otis's story, it's not impossible that he
could have gone overlooked for years, ignored. Because someone confessing
to a murder willingly submitting themselves to at least a
long prison term and maybe even the death penalty. It
just seems weird, hard to believe until maybe it is
(04:32):
believed taken for truth by the right people. People with influence.
They recruit the power of big institutions, and what seemed
before like conventional wisdom is suddenly unsettled. So we had
to investigate Otis's story for ourselves because it might get
a man, Jamil out of prison. From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV,
(04:57):
and iHeart podcasts, This is Radic I'm Mosey's Secret, Episode
six Confession. At the time of the shootout in the
(05:26):
West End March of two thousand, Otis Jackson was on
parole for a battery conviction he had picked up in Nevada.
He'd allegedly shot a guy after an argument over a dog.
Otis was allowed to stay at his mother's house in
Atlanta because he was wearing an ankle monitor. Each day
after work, Otis was supposed to go straight home to
his mom's. Basically, he had a curfew. But a few
(05:49):
weeks after the shootout and after a man Jamille was
arrested for it, Otis was sent back to Nevada for
violating his parole, and he was incarcerated at the Clark
County Detention Center in Las Vegas.
Speaker 3 (06:01):
When I got back in Nevada, I immediately called the
authorities there, and actually, to be honest, they didn't want
to hear it. I called maybe about eight times.
Speaker 2 (06:19):
Finally an FBI agent went out to the prison to
listen to what Otis had to say, and he confessed
to shooting Deputy Kenjin and Deputy English. This was months
before man Jamil's trial would start in Earnest.
Speaker 3 (06:30):
I just said it, little man, you guys have the
wrong guy in jail, you know, so I don't want
anybody in jail or in treason for something that I know.
The rested the wrong guy. So here's what happened. And
he was definitely not interested in that. He told me,
any man, we got over the shake case here with Jamil,
so there's no need for you to be involved in this.
Speaker 2 (06:53):
After Otis confessed, he was moved to solitary confinement. The
guards put a sign on his door that said cop killer,
and they started to get giving him a hard time.
Speaker 5 (07:01):
He was playing with the food who called me cop killer.
Sometime they would let me out of the shower. Sometimes
they wouldn't, and when they did, sometime they would put
me in a shower and locked me in a shower,
and I would be in handcuff in that shower for
hours without being able to actually shower because I'm still
in handcuff.
Speaker 3 (07:20):
So y'a. But man, listen, A lot of crazy stuff happened.
Speaker 2 (07:24):
A few months after he spoke to the FBI, Otis
wrote a statement, not sure if he put it in
the mail or just handed it off to a guard,
but it said, I Otis Milton Jackson was just trying
to help a brother, not knowing it would give me
the case. I loved Jamil, but I did not do anything.
I killed no one, and Jamil killed no one. I'm
(07:45):
so sorry for making the FBI feel as if I
did this. Robert McBurney, the lead prosecutor in a man
Jamial's case, he learned of Otis's confession, and because of
procedural rules around potentially exculpatory evidence like this, McBurnie had
to tell the defense team Otis's retraction just a few
months after he officially confessed. That would be a problem
(08:08):
for the defense if they called and to testify. But
Jack Martin, a man Jamil's lead defense lawyer, he suggested
he wasn't too concerned about that. Otis said he withdrew
his confession because he'd been thrown in solitary confinement, a
decision that a jury could make sense of the investigator
for the defense what Tani Taijimba he interviewed Otis. Martin
(08:30):
remembered the report that what Tani gave the defense team.
Speaker 4 (08:34):
He you know, described Otis Jackson as giving us a
consistent story. But you never know about somebody where, you know.
I don't know whether believe him or not, but that's
what his story makes sense.
Speaker 2 (08:48):
Not sure whether he's telling the truth, but the story
makes sense. That would have to be good enough. Remember,
they only needed a reasonable doubt. Martin was ready to
call Otis as a witness, but then Robert McBurney, the
prosecutor he got in touch with Martin.
Speaker 4 (09:05):
McBurney told me, listen, Jack, he was on probation at
the time. He had an acco monitor on him, and
we can prove that he wasn't in the West End
area that night.
Speaker 2 (09:16):
McBurney said he had data from Otis's ankle monitor that
showed Otis was at home at his mom's house and
it would have been physically impossible for him to have
shot the deputies.
Speaker 4 (09:26):
And he said, I just hope you call him because
we'll be able to blow him out of the water
with that ankle bracelet. I accepted that as being I
didn't think McBurney would lie to me about that. I
accepted that, and I thought, well, this is a death
penloty case. If we call some witness, it blows up
on us in the stand. That's going to HURTSS on
the death penalty if we have to go there.
Speaker 2 (09:49):
If the defense called Otis and then the prosecution proved
he was lying, the jury wouldn't trust the defense team
during the sentencing phase when they were asking the jury
to spare a man Jamil's life.
Speaker 4 (10:01):
So I made the decision or we made a decision
not to call him.
Speaker 2 (10:06):
The jury never heard Otis's confession, and AmAm Jamil was
convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After a mam
Jamil's initial appeals failed in the Georgia Supreme Court. His
lawyers filed a habeas corpus appeal, the final shot at
least to the courts to get him out of prison.
(10:28):
The legal team got a deposition from Otis, who was
out of solitary at this point, and he again confessed
to the shooting under oath. In February of two thousand
and seven, after a Mam Jamil had already spent about
five years in solitary confinement, there was a hearing focused
on the possibility that Otis shot the deputies. It was
(10:48):
in Tattnall County, Georgia, where a Mamjmial was being held
at Reidsville Prison. At this hearing, a founder of the
company that made the technology uses a part of Otis's
angle monitor to fight. He said the data actually did
not show definitively that Otis was at home at the
time of the shootout. This was big. It meant that
(11:09):
Jack Martin had bad information when he decided against calling
Otis to the stand during the trial. It meant Otis
could have been anywhere the night of March sixteenth, two thousand,
including in the West End, behind the trigger of a
semi automatic rifle. So with all this information in mind,
when Otis told my producer Johnny his story about what
(11:30):
happened that night in the West End, we had to listen.
Speaker 3 (11:35):
I went there. I went to work first, and I
found out that I wasn't on the schedule to work.
Speaker 2 (11:42):
That was like a free pass for Otis to do
whatever he wanted that day, under the guys that he
was working to be out in the world at least
before he had to me back home. In the evening,
Otis decided to run some errands.
Speaker 3 (11:54):
I was moving some guns from one place to another
and a bulletproof ess. So I'll put the guns in
the trunk and I put I had one gun on me,
a nine millimeis, and I drove to the West End community.
Speaker 2 (12:11):
Otis said that at the time he was one of
the leaders of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, an organization
law enforcement would call it a gang that was founded
in Chicago. Back in the day. Otis was planning to
get a branch of the Vice Lords going in Atlanta,
and while he was running errands on March sixteenth, his
plan was to visit a Maam Jamil to give him
a heads up. The Western mass did under a man
(12:34):
Jamil had armed security patrols, and AmAm Jamil had developed
a reputation over the years for pushing out drug dealers.
Otis just wanted to stop by to say, hey, we're
going to be moving into the area, but we don't
want any business with your community. Otis said he parked
his car outside the mass did and the brothers told
him AmAm Jamial wasn't around. He stuck around for prayer
(12:56):
and he chatted with the brothers afterward. Actually, he realized
it was getting late, and so he walked across the
street to a Man Jamil's store, hoping he'd may be
shown up, But the lights were off and the doors
were locked. As Otis was walking away, the deputies pulled up.
They got out and told Otis to put up his hands.
(13:20):
Otis said he tried to explain himself, said he wasn't
breaking into the store or anything, that he was looking
for the owner, but one of the deputies had already
drawn his gun and was screaming out orders.
Speaker 3 (13:32):
So it's like two half of mails. Either one of
us are back and now, and before I knew it, it
had just escalated. I knew I had a gun on me,
I'm all house arrest, I got so this is gonna
send me right back to prison. It just wasn't happen,
and I did what I felt that I had to
do at the time. I pulled out my gun and fired.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
Both deputies fired back, and Otis was hitting the arm.
He ran to his car, which was parked across the
street with a trunk full of guns, remember, and he
grabbed an M fourteen, a semi automatic rifle. Otis said
that Kenchin was being more aggressive than English, who was
calling for help on his radio. So Otis went hard
(14:14):
after Kenchin, who tried to take cover behind the black
Mercedes that was parked on the street. Then Kenchin fell,
Otis walked over to him.
Speaker 3 (14:22):
I remember him telling me that he had a child
and he was explaining to me, man, don't do it.
You know, I got a little girl, and he was
telling the other stuff. And at the time, I mean,
you just shot me. You don't understand, like you know,
we don't you know, we don't flit to the point
of no retire. Now you just you know, shot me.
I'm sitting up here a bloody mess. I'm bleeding on
(14:43):
the head and also so I'm thinking that I'll shot
in the head. But it wasn't a bullet at all.
It was a piece of land from the car that
had large in the side of my head. So but
I didn't know it at the time. So I stood
over him and I shot him in the growing.
Speaker 2 (15:00):
Otis said. He turned to find English and saw him
running away toward the field next to the mast Jit
and then shot and bloody. Amped up on adrenaline, Otis
forgot his car was there and started looking for help.
Speaker 3 (15:14):
Well, you go through a situation like that, you know,
when you're shooting at people and people are shooting at you,
you can't be a little outside of you, said, I'm
not going to say out of a body's fan, but
you kind of get outside of yourself. So I got
a little confused for a second.
Speaker 2 (15:30):
Eventually, Otis came back to his senses, he found his car,
and he drove home. This was a wild story, but
in some ways it made more sense than the story
we had heard about AmAm Jamil. Otis had a track
record of shooting people with little provocation. He was a hothead,
(15:53):
and he didn't have as much to lose as a
Mam Jamial. Still, something was definitely off about the guy
he'd pled guilty to writing letters to public officials threatening
to kill them unless they accepted his confession and freedom.
Ma'am Jamil, that's why he was in prison. But like
I said, some powerful people were convinced he was telling
(16:14):
the truth. It helped a Mam Jamil get access to
a new legal process that could potentially get him out
of prison. It took the judge seven years to reject
a Ma'am Jamil's habeas appeal, the one in Tattnall County, Georgia,
where it came out that the ankle monitor did not
prove Otis Jackson was at home during the shootout. The
(16:38):
judge rejected the appeal in twenty eleven. AmAm Jamil's lawyers
kept at it, though, appealing to higher courts. But I'll
just tell you now, all of those habeas appeals were rejected.
The odds of an inmate winning any type of release
on a habeas claim are very very slim. But then
(16:59):
in Yeahanuary of twenty twenty, almost two decades after the shootout,
a new path opened up for a Mam Jmial, new
hope for him and his supporters. The Fulton County DA
created something called the Conviction Integrity Unit, or the CiU.
(17:19):
It's a division within the prosecutor's office that examines cases
from the past looking for wrongful convictions that could be overturned.
When the civil rights legend Andrew Young wrote a letter
to the Fulton County DA claiming a Maam Jimial was innocent,
he sent it to the CiU. Specifically, Otis Jackson was
a focus of the letter. Young wrote that Otis matched
(17:41):
some eyewitnesses descriptions of the shooter. Otis was violating his
parole and so he had a motive for shooting the deputies.
He had ammunition at home that matched the ammunition used
during the shooting, and he had been convicted of violent
crimes in the past. It seems like Young's letter influenced
the Fulton County DA because we later learned the CiU
(18:03):
was reviewing a Ma'am Jamil's case and the ma'm Jamil
supporters in other corners. They focused on Otis, too, mounting
campaigns to try to convince big media organizations like CNN
to interview him. A coalition of twenty eight Muslim American
organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice that
also made Otis's confession a focus. But to convince the
(18:26):
DA's office or the courts, Otis's confession alone would never
be enough, especially after all these years. It wouldn't be
enough to convince me either. Any good journalists would want
to find corroboration for a bombshell like this, so we
set out to try to find people who Otis had
encountered or spoken to in the aftermath of the shooting.
Speaker 3 (18:47):
I'm coming down from the durn them was now the situation.
Speaker 2 (18:52):
That started in the When Otis returned to his mom's house,
the phone rang. A parole officer was calling to check
on him. Otis told the officer he was just getting
home from work, but the officer said he still had
to market as a violation. But Otis's mind was elsewhere.
He said he was in pain, bleeding from the gunshot wounds.
(19:13):
He called a neighbor, a nurse who lived across the street,
to come over and fix them up, and two other
women came to lend a hand. A bullet was lodged
in Otis's shoulder, and they extracted it stitched him up.
One of the women gave Otis some painkillers, but advill
or tile and all after a bullet wound. I'm thinking
this had to be excruciating.
Speaker 3 (19:34):
Luckily for me, I just happened to know these people,
because if I had not, probably would have died.
Speaker 2 (19:43):
The morning after the shootout, Otis said he gave all
the guns he had to his brother, told him he
didn't want them because he was on parole, and then
he called a reporter at a local TV station. Otis
was worried and Mam Jamil was going to be arrested
for the shooting.
Speaker 6 (19:58):
You got to understand when they when they start artist
saying that this guy did it and they were looking
for this they were looking for him. The first thing
that brought to my mind was, damn, man, they're about
to arrest the wrong person.
Speaker 3 (20:11):
I don't want this guy to go to jail for
something I did. That's not right.
Speaker 2 (20:16):
When the reporter showed up, Otis said he offered to
give him the bloody clothes he had worn during the shootout,
but the reporter said, look, if you do that, then
I'd have to turn them over to the police. Otis
didn't like that idea, so he didn't give the reporter
the clothes, but he still agreed to an interview. Meanwhile,
since Otis had violated his parole, law enforcement came to
(20:39):
search his house, and a few weeks later he was
shipped back to Nevada. So that's Otis's story of the
aftermath of the shooting. Plenty of leads to chase down right. First,
we went to the block where Otis was staying with
his mom back in March of two thousand and we
spoke to some of the neighbors. They confirmed that Otis's
(21:02):
mother lived there, but they didn't know any nurses who
lived nearby in two thousand. No corroboration there. Then we
got a transcription of an interview with Otis's brother. He said, nah,
Otis never gave me any guns. No corroboration there, But
maybe that's what anyone would say to protect a brother
who gave him a bunch of guns and then confess
to a murder that happened the night before. So next
(21:25):
we tracked down a recording in the local news segment
featuring Otis. One of the man Jamil supporters gave it
to us. They had been monitoring and recording TV news
after the shootout. You are watching eleven or five news
at Viberi as a suspect in the shootings of two deputies.
Speaker 7 (21:42):
By its extradition back to.
Speaker 5 (21:43):
Georgia, old friends paint a different picture of a man
accused of murder.
Speaker 7 (21:48):
He took a community that was infested with prostitution and
drugs and drug dealers, and he cleaned it up. Good
evening again.
Speaker 2 (21:56):
I'm de Otis goes by Silas. Muhammad in the segment
text at the bottom of the screen calls him a
friend of Alamine. From what we've heard, when Otis was
in Atlanta, he might have stopped by the mass jed
to mix a lot a few times, but a friend
of Alamine. That was probably local TV news stretching the
facts a bit. The story was set up to be
about someone close to AmAm Jamil and the Weston Masjid
(22:19):
who argued to Ma'am Jamil was a peaceful religious leader.
Speaker 7 (22:22):
I know that Jamil a Lamine did not shoot any
police officers that night.
Speaker 8 (22:30):
Would you put your hand on the Kuran and say that, yes,
Sir I would.
Speaker 7 (22:35):
Would you stake your life on him, yes, Sir I will.
Speaker 2 (22:39):
The segment buried at the very end what I would
consider the most important information from the whole thing.
Speaker 8 (22:44):
Solace. Mohammad says that there are people in this community
who revere and respect and love Jamil Abdullah A Lamine,
and that there are people here who would do anything
to protect him, that includes shooting at Fulton County Sheriff's deputies.
Speaker 5 (22:57):
Do you mark if silace, Mohammed says, Alameine didn't pull
the trigger, does he know who did?
Speaker 7 (23:02):
Well?
Speaker 8 (23:03):
I asked him that and he said he would not
answer for two reasons. He said he fears self incrimination
and he also respects the code of silence. But he
did say he hopes and expects that important information will
be revealed during the court process.
Speaker 2 (23:17):
We played this story back for the reporter he's retired now,
and he told us he didn't remember it. That's understandable.
A local TV reporter might do thousands of stories in
their career, and so we asked, did he remember Otis
telling him off the record and off camera that he
had been involved in a recent shooting. No, the reporter said,
(23:38):
and if Otis had told him that, he would have remembered.
When we asked Otis for his help corroborating his story,
asked him who we should try to talk to and
if he has suggestions for contacting them. He wasn't much help.
Too much time had passed. He said, you're not going
to get anywhere.
Speaker 3 (23:57):
If I were in your shoes, I'll probably would scrap
this story and do something else, maybe a story on dogs,
you know, because.
Speaker 6 (24:05):
I'm bey honest man, like, you're not gonna have a
lot of people willing to talk about the murd of
a police officer.
Speaker 2 (24:14):
I got a laugh out of that one. Yes, interviewing
folks about their dogs would be easier than what we're doing.
People are not especially willing to share information about a
murder they might be even tangentially connected to. But I
got the sense that Otis was communicating more than that.
Speaker 4 (24:31):
Just believe me.
Speaker 2 (24:32):
He seemed to be saying, this story could move mountains
if people only believed. Some things might work like that.
But journalism isn't one of them, and for the most part,
the legal system isn't either. We uncovered some glaring inconsistencies
between Otis's different accounts of what happened. On March sixteenth,
(24:54):
two thousand, The FBI interviewed Otis in Las Vegas, a
few months after the shoot. According to a summary of
the interview Otis had it all went down during the
day and Maam Jamil was there and when the deputies
pulled up, Otis jumped to his defense. There was a
fistfight and then the guns came out, but a Maam
Jamil didn't get involved. That's a different story than Otis's
(25:18):
other accounts, and the shootout definitely happened at night. I
just can't trust Otis, And while the Conviction Integrity Unit
or the courts they might at least consider his story,
I don't think they'll ever be able to trust him either.
Late in our reporting, we learned that in twenty nineteen,
(25:39):
in Florida, Otis was called to testify in a different
high profile murder trial over a Grizzly quadruple murder. He
had made another confession. The judge ordered that a psychologist
evaluate Otis and look into his mental health history. According
to the psychologist's report back in two thousand and six,
Otis showed no symptoms of distress, but in two thousand
(26:02):
and eight he made repeated requests for mental health treatment,
and when he was placed in solitary confinement, he began
to report auditory hallucinations. He was hearing voices. Otis was
adamant he was not mentally ill, but a different psychologist
said his symptoms were consistent with bipolar disorder and delusional disorder.
(26:23):
The psychologists who evaluated Otis wrote that Otis's claims about
his past were quote highly suspect, but that he had
the capacity to testify in the Florida case. He is
a highly intelligent individual, the report said. One time, when
I was trying to wrap my head around all of this,
I just let my imagination run wild. I started thinking
(26:45):
about how some people who hear voices say they're experiencing
a broader reality through their mind's ear that the rest
of us can't sense. And I thought, Wow, what if
Otis slash Silas Mohammad slash James Santos keeps infesting the
crimes he was there for, but not really there for
until And this is where I really let my imagination
(27:06):
run wild. By some epiphany, Otis learns to control his
powers and emerges from the darkest prisons as a force
for good. Otis Jackson is a comic book superhero cool
origin story. Right, No, it doesn't make a lick of sense,
but he got me thinking there might be a place
in this story about AmAm Jamil for a more intentional
(27:29):
use of imagination. A ma'am Jamil was a magnet for
people who couldn't distinguish between made up stories and what
was happening before their eyes, whose fantasies would float out
into the world and have very real consequences. Otis is
maybe the most extreme example, but he wasn't the only one.
If I can't escape this mythological realm, maybe I should
(27:49):
learn to play with it. A departure from the realm
of journalism, for sure, but maybe it would do some good.
But for now, back to reality. Otis responded to one
of our letters a few months ago, but he hasn't
called us in months. He never came out and told
(28:11):
Johnny I'm done with these interviews, but on one of
their later calls, Otis said.
Speaker 3 (28:16):
This, I'm to a point, man, where really I'm kind
of I'm kind of tired of talking about it. For real.
I've got to a point where I feel like it
is what it is. Man. I got a release date.
They're gonna let me out of prison, so I don't
really see the need to, you know, keep repeating something
over and over and over and over and over again,
(28:37):
especially where when there's no real benefit for me. So
why I keep doing that?
Speaker 2 (28:49):
I do think that a part of Otis really believes
what he's saying, and for some reason, the story took
holding a fragment of his personality. His reality is so
real for him he do almost anything to make others
see it. But after hours of listening to Otis's voice,
I wanted to get back to the documents, and in
the thousands of pages we had, there were a few
(29:11):
that I needed to spend more time with. Years ago,
a man Jamil recounted his version of what happened the
night of the shootout, and I turned there next. At
the time of this recording, a mam Jamil Elamine is
(29:34):
seventy nine years old and he's still in prison, a
federal prisoner in Arizona, equipped to provide medical care. He
got out of Adax, Florence because he was sick. It
may be obvious by now, but this feels like the
time to say it. I wasn't able to interview him.
(29:54):
I wrote to him, but I didn't hear back. AmAm
Jamil didn't testify during his murder trial, but during one
of his appeals the one in Tattneau County back in
two thousand and seven. He gave his account under oath
and on the record of what happened on March sixteenth,
(30:16):
two thousand. AmAm Jamil said that earlier in the day,
hours before the shootout, he had a run in with
some young folks in the neighborhood who were selling drugs.
AmAm Jamil hated drugs, hated them since his days as
Rat Brown. He saw them as a scourge on the
(30:36):
black community and part of a government conspiracy to keep
up potentially rebellious population sedated. During his testimony, he said
the western neighborhood near the Maschiff had been infested with
drugs at least until the brothers led by him started
exerting their influence, and this had made him some enemies.
As evening approached on the night of the shooting, a
(30:57):
man Jamil had dinner with his family at Red Life. Afterward,
he wanted to check the mail, so he drove back
to the West End and parked his car near the
Masjed in the store, He got out of the car
and he was in the empty field next to the
mass Jed, walking towards the back entrance when he said
he heard two pistol shots and then many more rounds
of gunfire. A Maam Jamil didn't look back. He said
(31:22):
he went into safety mode, thinking the drug dealers were
after him. He got low and ran behind the mass Jed.
Then he kept running through the neighborhood he knew well.
He went in a loop behind houses, through backyards and
cuts until he arrived back at the store that's across
the street from the mass Jed. The gunfire had stopped
and he didn't see anyone else around. He got in
(31:43):
his Mercedes and he drove off. AmAm Jamil said he
initially intended to drive home, but then thinking the drug
dealers were after him, he decided and said to go
to Lowndes County, Alabama, the location of a smaller Muslim
community he founded. An attorney for the state arguing against
a Ma'am Jamial's appeal asked why he didn't call the police,
(32:05):
and Maam Jamial said the mask Jed had a quote
security arrangement. Instead of calling the police, the first people
he would have spoken to would have been meant on
the mass Jed security force, who were supposed to be
on duty that night. Over the years. This is not
one that has haunted you or that you think about
(32:27):
or no. Brett Zembric, the Atlanta Police Department detective who
investigated the shootout, he was one of the first people
I interviewed. A lot of what Brett said was in
my head when I reviewed a Mam Jamial's testimony.
Speaker 9 (32:40):
I don't have any doubts about this case. I never
had any doubts about this case. It was a case that,
you know, these guys got shot. They just happened to
be wearing badges and guns, and this is who shot him,
and he just happened to be someone that had some notariety.
There's absolutely no no thought whatsoever that there's somebody else involved,
(33:03):
that there's you know, a conspiracy to get a trip
who wins there? I mean, what was he doing that
was so you know, dramatic that we needed to get
him off the street at any cost.
Speaker 2 (33:15):
I don't get it.
Speaker 9 (33:15):
So, you know, based on what I know about the incident,
what I've been told, what I see, and what the
test results are, I have no doubt in my mind
that you know, Jamil all means shot these two deputies
killed one of them. I don't think for a minute
that he needs another trial or you know, another chance
(33:39):
at you know, doing good. I think what happened happened,
and the punishment fits a crime, and I'm glad.
Speaker 2 (33:48):
He's doing the time. When I left Brett's house, I thought,
I can't really argue as much of what he said.
It became even harder for me to believe that a
man Jamil had a confer with drug dealers that ultimately
blossomed into a vast conspiracy, a conspiracy that's been kept
secret all these years. But after I looked more closely
(34:10):
at the trial transcripts and the documents we got from
the DA's office, and after I talked to people who
were part of the mass did and who lived in
the West End, I became convinced that there was more
to what happened that night than what was revealed in
court or even in all the documents we'd obtained. When
I asked the man Jamil's defense attorneys, Tony Axim and
Jack Martin for their theories of what happened, it only
(34:32):
confirmed my suspicion. Here's Axom, I can't tell you that
I don't know the answer to that.
Speaker 10 (34:39):
And I said, there with a smile. I have no theories,
have no theories, can't answer. I don't know the answer
question I wish I did. My memory is totally blank.
Speaker 2 (34:58):
That might be one of the most entertaining NOE commet
responses that I've ever gotten in my career. Jack Martin
was more helpful.
Speaker 4 (35:05):
I seriously think that it's possible, not just possible, but
likely that al I mean was confronted by these officers
and there was a lot of yelling and screaming, and
that somebody is supporting the community. Maybe it's Otis Jacks,
and maybe somebody else saw that and thought all means
(35:28):
in trouble and did something stupid. All I mean was
reluctant to present a case forcely that somebody else did.
He was trying to protect that person. He thought that
(35:48):
would involve him, and it would some extent, but it
would it would defeat the murder charge. So I understood that.
So I don't think we pressed that as hard as
we perhaps should have, but we let the jury sort
of linger out there over that issue.
Speaker 2 (36:10):
We let the jury sort of linger out there over
that issue. Martin said, I'm not bringing in all this
information from Martin. It's just another way to raise doubt
about whether a man, Jimial shot the two deputies. It's
something I've heard on and off the record that maybe
someone else was there, that the West End was the
kind of neighborhood where people confronted trouble with guns blazing.
(36:34):
Everybody knew he was a dangered person, and my friend said, Hey,
what hell you do.
Speaker 7 (36:40):
Don't get in the call with that motherfucker because they
know you'll come at when a murricane.
Speaker 2 (36:46):
That's on the next episode of Radical. Radical is a
(37:08):
production of Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, and iHeart Podcasts. Radical
was reported and written by Johnny Kaufman and me Mosey's Secret.
Johnnykauffman is our senior producer. Shepa Joseph is our associate producer.
Editing by Eric Benson, Johnny Couffman, Emily Martinez and Matt Cher.
(37:28):
Fact checking by Sophie Hurwitz, Kaylin Lynch, and Layla Dos.
Original music by Kyle Murdoch and by Ray Murray of
Organized Noise, Sound design and mixing by Kevin Seaman. Recording
by Ewan Leed trem Ewen and Sheba Joseph. Campside Media's
operations team is Doug Slaywan, Ashley Warren, Elijah Papes, Destiny Dingle,
(37:50):
and Sabina Merra. The executive producers at Campside Media are
Josh Dean, Vanessa, Gregoriatis, Adam Hoff, and Matt Cher. For
Tenderfoot TV, executive producers are Donald Albright and Payne Lindsay.
The executive producers at iHeart Podcasts are Matt Frederick and
Alex Williams, with additional support from Trevor Young,
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