By Brian Carnell

Monday, March 11, 2002

Former 60s radical H. Rap Brown -- now Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin -- was convicted over the weekend on 13 counts related to a shooting in which Al-Amin killed an Atlanta police officer and wounded his partner. Al-Amin's trial now enters its death penalty phase. Under Georgia law, a person found guilty of a murder and an aggravating crime, such as killing a police officer, can receive the death penalty.

Al-Amin appeared first on the public stage as the fiery leader of the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee and later Black Panther Party member who famously asserted that violence was "as American as cherry pie" and once claimed he might shoot Lyndon Johnson's wife.

Brown was imprisoned several times in the late 1960s. In 1967 he was charged with inciting a riot and convicted of armed robbery in 1973. By the time of his release in 1976, Brown had converted to Islam and taken on the Al-Amin name. Until his latest legal problems, Al-Amin ran a grocery store and mosque on the west side of Atlanta.

In March 2000, Sheriff's Deputies Ricky Kinchen and Aldranon English went to Al-Amin's store where they attempted to serve a warrant on Al-Amin for missing a previous court date on charges of impersonating an officer and theft. Al-Amin opened fire on the officers with a Ruger .223 rifle and a Browning pistol, wounding one officer and killing the other.

Although Al-Amin was later capture with the rifle and bullets from a 9mm Beretta used by the police officers were found in Al-Amin's Mercedes, Al-Amin's defense claimed that someone else did the shooting.

A defense committee was set up for Al-Amin, which garnered support from two other famous leftist convicts -- |Bobby Seale| (Seale's former lawyer represented Al-Amin) and Mumia Abu Jamal. In one of his dispatches from jail, Abu Jamal wrote,

Imam Jamil has lived a good and rich life in service to his spiritual and ethnic community. He richly deserves the fullest support in all efforts leading to his freedom, so that he may return to the community.

Of course, for Jamal, the dead black police officer in this case is but a footnote unworthy of even mentioning by name in his piece (maybe Jamal thinks the same organized crime outfit that he ridiculously claims killed Daniel Faulkner also was responsible or the shooting in Atlanta). No surprise there.

Source:

Who is Al-Amin?: From radical H. Rap Brown to religious leader to murder charge. Justin Bachman, Associated Press, May 24, 2000.

Al-Amin's life now on the line. Steve Visser and Lateef Mungin, Atlanta Journal-Constitution, March 9, 2002.

Free Jamil Al-Amin. Mumia Abu-Jamal, ImamJamil.Com, Undated, Accessed: March, 11, 2002.

Search for Ex-Panther Heats Up. ABCNews.Com, March 17, 2002.

Fate of '60s Militant H.Rap Brown with Atlanta Jury. Reuters, March 8, 2002.

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