WEBVTT - Confession 0:00:02.080 --> 0:00:04.960 The views and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely 0:00:05.000 --> 0:00:08.840 those of the podcast author or individuals participating in the podcast, 0:00:09.160 --> 0:00:12.400 and do not represent those of iHeartRadio or their employees. 0:00:13.000 --> 0:00:15.840 This podcast also contains subject matter which may not be 0:00:15.880 --> 0:00:17.640 suitable for everyone listening to. 0:00:17.640 --> 0:00:22.880 Discretion is advised. Radical is released every Tuesday and brought 0:00:22.880 --> 0:00:25.840 to you absolutely free, but if you want to add 0:00:25.880 --> 0:00:29.840 free listening and early access to next week's episode, subscribe 0:00:29.840 --> 0:00:35.960 to tenderfoot Plus. For more information, check out tenderfootplus dot com. 0:00:36.040 --> 0:00:46.479 Enjoy the episode. 0:00:42.520 --> 0:00:48.960 Campsite Media, How far are you willing to go? Because 0:00:49.080 --> 0:00:51.400 like most of the people definitely never talked to me, 0:00:51.560 --> 0:00:54.440 they never talk to people that know me. So now 0:00:54.520 --> 0:00:58.640 they have what they think is the truth and they 0:00:58.720 --> 0:00:59.760 have run with that. 0:01:03.960 --> 0:01:07.160 In November of twenty twenty one, Johnny Kaufman got a 0:01:07.160 --> 0:01:10.160 call from a man in federal prison. Johnny is the 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:12.480 lead producer of this podcast, and the call came to 0:01:12.560 --> 0:01:14.880 him months before he convinced me to help him do 0:01:14.959 --> 0:01:17.920 more reporting, to host the podcast and make the story 0:01:17.920 --> 0:01:21.600 of my own. Johnny had been filing open records requests 0:01:21.880 --> 0:01:25.440 looking for problems with the Maam Jimial's prosecution and talking 0:01:25.440 --> 0:01:29.120 to this man in prison. An interesting man, a man who, 0:01:29.160 --> 0:01:30.880 over the course of his life, has gone by at 0:01:31.000 --> 0:01:37.200 least three names, Otis Jackson, Silas Mohammad, and James Santos. 0:01:38.240 --> 0:01:42.160 I'm going to call him Otis Jackson. On the phone, 0:01:42.319 --> 0:01:46.000 Otis was serious, didn't really joke much, and he sounded 0:01:46.080 --> 0:01:48.680 like a smart guy. He said violence was a part 0:01:48.680 --> 0:01:51.120 of his childhood, and he moved around a lot as 0:01:51.120 --> 0:01:51.520 a kid. 0:01:53.280 --> 0:01:57.240 I floated from family member of family members of different people. 0:01:57.280 --> 0:01:57.840 You know, I mean. 0:02:00.240 --> 0:02:00.480 Cool. 0:02:03.520 --> 0:02:03.760 You know. 0:02:05.640 --> 0:02:09.120 When Otis finished high school, he worked in construction, but 0:02:09.200 --> 0:02:12.440 before long he decided he can make more money hustling. 0:02:13.840 --> 0:02:16.280 I'm not a violent person, but I can get vin 0:02:16.400 --> 0:02:19.600 and give. I'll put in a particular situation that's try 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:23.040 the reason, but sometime the goal is beyond reason. 0:02:25.120 --> 0:02:27.480 Otis's rap sheet is long and goes back to at 0:02:27.560 --> 0:02:33.280 least nineteen ninety one. He's been charged with battery, armed robbery, 0:02:33.680 --> 0:02:38.519 credit card fraud, and grand theft auto. Right now, he's 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:40.880 in federal prison in the Midwest, set to get out 0:02:40.880 --> 0:02:45.800 in a few years. Otis is forty nine, black, shaved 0:02:45.800 --> 0:02:48.720 head at least in the photos we have, and he's 0:02:48.760 --> 0:02:52.960 around five foot seven, he has some scars, there's a 0:02:53.000 --> 0:02:55.919 dark mark on his forehead, a callous that some Muslims 0:02:55.919 --> 0:03:01.440 get from praying otis. He brings us to another chapter 0:03:01.520 --> 0:03:04.679 of this story, and in particular, to get another way 0:03:04.720 --> 0:03:08.799 of thinking about and understanding the truth. I've encountered truths 0:03:08.840 --> 0:03:12.400 that were tucked away just beyond my reach, and truths 0:03:12.440 --> 0:03:15.680 that were wrapped up in coats of fiction. With this guy, 0:03:16.040 --> 0:03:19.480 there was no secrecy or subterfuge or anything like that. Really, 0:03:20.240 --> 0:03:23.760 it was the opposite. In fact, for more than twenty years, 0:03:23.919 --> 0:03:26.840 he has been blasting at full volume that he is 0:03:26.880 --> 0:03:30.480 the one who shot Deputies Ricky Keinchin and Algernon English, 0:03:30.880 --> 0:03:32.280 but no one was really listening. 0:03:34.360 --> 0:03:39.800 I've gotten away with murder for real. On some people say, man, 0:03:39.840 --> 0:03:42.520 you get away with murder. I've literally gotten away with murder. 0:03:42.600 --> 0:03:48.560 So yeah, I don't help all of it. It's not 0:03:48.920 --> 0:03:51.680 like that these people are not aware. It's just that 0:03:51.720 --> 0:03:55.160 they don't want to accept it because, you know, most 0:03:55.160 --> 0:03:57.640 of the time, like most human beings, if we do 0:03:57.800 --> 0:04:01.240 something wrong, we don't want to be told if we're wrong. 0:04:01.560 --> 0:04:04.680 And they convicted the wrong guy and sit the wrong 0:04:04.720 --> 0:04:08.240 guy to prison for life, for something that another guy needs. 0:04:10.840 --> 0:04:14.240 When you track Otis's story, it's not impossible that he 0:04:14.280 --> 0:04:19.400 could have gone overlooked for years, ignored. Because someone confessing 0:04:19.440 --> 0:04:23.760 to a murder willingly submitting themselves to at least a 0:04:23.800 --> 0:04:27.680 long prison term and maybe even the death penalty. It 0:04:27.760 --> 0:04:32.440 just seems weird, hard to believe until maybe it is 0:04:32.480 --> 0:04:36.520 believed taken for truth by the right people. People with influence. 0:04:37.760 --> 0:04:41.039 They recruit the power of big institutions, and what seemed 0:04:41.040 --> 0:04:45.279 before like conventional wisdom is suddenly unsettled. So we had 0:04:45.279 --> 0:04:50.160 to investigate Otis's story for ourselves because it might get 0:04:50.160 --> 0:04:56.960 a man, Jamil out of prison. From Campside Media, Tenderfoot TV, 0:04:57.480 --> 0:05:03.799 and iHeart podcasts, This is Radic I'm Mosey's Secret, Episode 0:05:03.880 --> 0:05:26.680 six Confession. At the time of the shootout in the 0:05:26.680 --> 0:05:30.440 West End March of two thousand, Otis Jackson was on 0:05:30.480 --> 0:05:33.040 parole for a battery conviction he had picked up in Nevada. 0:05:33.640 --> 0:05:36.360 He'd allegedly shot a guy after an argument over a dog. 0:05:37.240 --> 0:05:39.159 Otis was allowed to stay at his mother's house in 0:05:39.200 --> 0:05:42.800 Atlanta because he was wearing an ankle monitor. Each day 0:05:42.800 --> 0:05:45.200 after work, Otis was supposed to go straight home to 0:05:45.240 --> 0:05:49.880 his mom's. Basically, he had a curfew. But a few 0:05:49.880 --> 0:05:52.520 weeks after the shootout and after a man Jamille was 0:05:52.600 --> 0:05:55.280 arrested for it, Otis was sent back to Nevada for 0:05:55.400 --> 0:05:58.440 violating his parole, and he was incarcerated at the Clark 0:05:58.440 --> 0:06:00.279 County Detention Center in Las Vegas. 0:06:01.080 --> 0:06:06.120 When I got back in Nevada, I immediately called the 0:06:06.200 --> 0:06:10.160 authorities there, and actually, to be honest, they didn't want 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.640 to hear it. I called maybe about eight times. 0:06:19.960 --> 0:06:22.159 Finally an FBI agent went out to the prison to 0:06:22.160 --> 0:06:24.760 listen to what Otis had to say, and he confessed 0:06:24.760 --> 0:06:28.120 to shooting Deputy Kenjin and Deputy English. This was months 0:06:28.120 --> 0:06:30.279 before man Jamil's trial would start in Earnest. 0:06:30.600 --> 0:06:33.200 I just said it, little man, you guys have the 0:06:33.240 --> 0:06:36.279 wrong guy in jail, you know, so I don't want 0:06:36.320 --> 0:06:40.160 anybody in jail or in treason for something that I know. 0:06:40.200 --> 0:06:43.479 The rested the wrong guy. So here's what happened. And 0:06:43.640 --> 0:06:46.640 he was definitely not interested in that. He told me, 0:06:46.680 --> 0:06:49.320 any man, we got over the shake case here with Jamil, 0:06:49.440 --> 0:06:52.160 so there's no need for you to be involved in this. 0:06:53.040 --> 0:06:56.719 After Otis confessed, he was moved to solitary confinement. The 0:06:56.720 --> 0:06:59.120 guards put a sign on his door that said cop killer, 0:06:59.320 --> 0:07:00.920 and they started to get giving him a hard time. 0:07:01.320 --> 0:07:04.040 He was playing with the food who called me cop killer. 0:07:04.120 --> 0:07:06.400 Sometime they would let me out of the shower. Sometimes 0:07:06.440 --> 0:07:09.320 they wouldn't, and when they did, sometime they would put 0:07:09.360 --> 0:07:12.240 me in a shower and locked me in a shower, 0:07:12.360 --> 0:07:15.360 and I would be in handcuff in that shower for 0:07:15.520 --> 0:07:19.240 hours without being able to actually shower because I'm still 0:07:19.240 --> 0:07:19.920 in handcuff. 0:07:20.480 --> 0:07:24.240 So y'a. But man, listen, A lot of crazy stuff happened. 0:07:24.600 --> 0:07:27.360 A few months after he spoke to the FBI, Otis 0:07:27.360 --> 0:07:29.840 wrote a statement, not sure if he put it in 0:07:29.840 --> 0:07:32.000 the mail or just handed it off to a guard, 0:07:32.240 --> 0:07:35.880 but it said, I Otis Milton Jackson was just trying 0:07:35.880 --> 0:07:38.480 to help a brother, not knowing it would give me 0:07:38.560 --> 0:07:42.040 the case. I loved Jamil, but I did not do anything. 0:07:42.600 --> 0:07:45.800 I killed no one, and Jamil killed no one. I'm 0:07:45.840 --> 0:07:48.040 so sorry for making the FBI feel as if I 0:07:48.120 --> 0:07:52.800 did this. Robert McBurney, the lead prosecutor in a man 0:07:52.920 --> 0:07:56.880 Jamial's case, he learned of Otis's confession, and because of 0:07:56.960 --> 0:08:01.480 procedural rules around potentially exculpatory evidence like this, McBurnie had 0:08:01.520 --> 0:08:05.200 to tell the defense team Otis's retraction just a few 0:08:05.200 --> 0:08:08.320 months after he officially confessed. That would be a problem 0:08:08.320 --> 0:08:11.120 for the defense if they called and to testify. But 0:08:11.240 --> 0:08:15.160 Jack Martin, a man Jamil's lead defense lawyer, he suggested 0:08:15.200 --> 0:08:18.520 he wasn't too concerned about that. Otis said he withdrew 0:08:18.520 --> 0:08:21.800 his confession because he'd been thrown in solitary confinement, a 0:08:21.840 --> 0:08:25.680 decision that a jury could make sense of the investigator 0:08:25.680 --> 0:08:30.600 for the defense what Tani Taijimba he interviewed Otis. Martin 0:08:30.640 --> 0:08:33.280 remembered the report that what Tani gave the defense team. 0:08:34.640 --> 0:08:38.679 He you know, described Otis Jackson as giving us a 0:08:39.040 --> 0:08:42.320 consistent story. But you never know about somebody where, you know. 0:08:42.480 --> 0:08:44.000 I don't know whether believe him or not, but that's 0:08:44.040 --> 0:08:45.640 what his story makes sense. 0:08:48.240 --> 0:08:50.840 Not sure whether he's telling the truth, but the story 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:54.760 makes sense. That would have to be good enough. Remember, 0:08:54.920 --> 0:08:58.240 they only needed a reasonable doubt. Martin was ready to 0:08:58.240 --> 0:09:01.360 call Otis as a witness, but then Robert McBurney, the 0:09:01.400 --> 0:09:03.640 prosecutor he got in touch with Martin. 0:09:05.120 --> 0:09:08.640 McBurney told me, listen, Jack, he was on probation at 0:09:08.679 --> 0:09:11.920 the time. He had an acco monitor on him, and 0:09:12.000 --> 0:09:14.720 we can prove that he wasn't in the West End 0:09:14.720 --> 0:09:15.480 area that night. 0:09:16.559 --> 0:09:19.160 McBurney said he had data from Otis's ankle monitor that 0:09:19.200 --> 0:09:22.880 showed Otis was at home at his mom's house and 0:09:22.920 --> 0:09:24.840 it would have been physically impossible for him to have 0:09:24.880 --> 0:09:25.760 shot the deputies. 0:09:26.640 --> 0:09:28.800 And he said, I just hope you call him because 0:09:28.840 --> 0:09:30.960 we'll be able to blow him out of the water 0:09:31.080 --> 0:09:35.080 with that ankle bracelet. I accepted that as being I 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.160 didn't think McBurney would lie to me about that. I 0:09:38.200 --> 0:09:40.320 accepted that, and I thought, well, this is a death 0:09:40.360 --> 0:09:43.440 penloty case. If we call some witness, it blows up 0:09:43.440 --> 0:09:46.000 on us in the stand. That's going to HURTSS on 0:09:46.080 --> 0:09:47.640 the death penalty if we have to go there. 0:09:49.520 --> 0:09:52.720 If the defense called Otis and then the prosecution proved 0:09:52.760 --> 0:09:55.640 he was lying, the jury wouldn't trust the defense team 0:09:55.679 --> 0:09:58.520 during the sentencing phase when they were asking the jury 0:09:58.559 --> 0:10:00.800 to spare a man Jamil's life. 0:10:01.040 --> 0:10:04.920 So I made the decision or we made a decision 0:10:04.960 --> 0:10:05.680 not to call him. 0:10:06.320 --> 0:10:10.079 The jury never heard Otis's confession, and AmAm Jamil was 0:10:10.120 --> 0:10:17.440 convicted and sentenced to life in prison. After a mam 0:10:17.520 --> 0:10:21.000 Jamil's initial appeals failed in the Georgia Supreme Court. His 0:10:21.080 --> 0:10:24.920 lawyers filed a habeas corpus appeal, the final shot at 0:10:24.960 --> 0:10:27.120 least to the courts to get him out of prison. 0:10:28.559 --> 0:10:31.480 The legal team got a deposition from Otis, who was 0:10:31.520 --> 0:10:34.560 out of solitary at this point, and he again confessed 0:10:34.559 --> 0:10:39.440 to the shooting under oath. In February of two thousand 0:10:39.480 --> 0:10:42.439 and seven, after a Mam Jamil had already spent about 0:10:42.480 --> 0:10:45.800 five years in solitary confinement, there was a hearing focused 0:10:45.800 --> 0:10:48.920 on the possibility that Otis shot the deputies. It was 0:10:48.920 --> 0:10:51.720 in Tattnall County, Georgia, where a Mamjmial was being held 0:10:51.760 --> 0:10:55.800 at Reidsville Prison. At this hearing, a founder of the 0:10:55.800 --> 0:10:58.400 company that made the technology uses a part of Otis's 0:10:58.440 --> 0:11:03.080 angle monitor to fight. He said the data actually did 0:11:03.120 --> 0:11:05.360 not show definitively that Otis was at home at the 0:11:05.360 --> 0:11:09.720 time of the shootout. This was big. It meant that 0:11:09.840 --> 0:11:12.880 Jack Martin had bad information when he decided against calling 0:11:12.880 --> 0:11:16.080 Otis to the stand during the trial. It meant Otis 0:11:16.080 --> 0:11:18.679 could have been anywhere the night of March sixteenth, two thousand, 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:22.959 including in the West End, behind the trigger of a 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:27.400 semi automatic rifle. So with all this information in mind, 0:11:27.760 --> 0:11:30.400 when Otis told my producer Johnny his story about what 0:11:30.480 --> 0:11:33.520 happened that night in the West End, we had to listen. 0:11:35.120 --> 0:11:38.960 I went there. I went to work first, and I 0:11:39.040 --> 0:11:41.280 found out that I wasn't on the schedule to work. 0:11:42.400 --> 0:11:44.080 That was like a free pass for Otis to do 0:11:44.160 --> 0:11:46.720 whatever he wanted that day, under the guys that he 0:11:46.800 --> 0:11:49.560 was working to be out in the world at least 0:11:49.559 --> 0:11:51.280 before he had to me back home. In the evening, 0:11:51.960 --> 0:11:54.000 Otis decided to run some errands. 0:11:54.559 --> 0:11:58.040 I was moving some guns from one place to another 0:11:58.200 --> 0:12:01.960 and a bulletproof ess. So I'll put the guns in 0:12:02.000 --> 0:12:04.520 the trunk and I put I had one gun on me, 0:12:04.559 --> 0:12:09.280 a nine millimeis, and I drove to the West End community. 0:12:11.440 --> 0:12:13.559 Otis said that at the time he was one of 0:12:13.600 --> 0:12:17.119 the leaders of the Almighty Vice Lord Nation, an organization 0:12:17.679 --> 0:12:20.240 law enforcement would call it a gang that was founded 0:12:20.280 --> 0:12:23.600 in Chicago. Back in the day. Otis was planning to 0:12:23.600 --> 0:12:25.760 get a branch of the Vice Lords going in Atlanta, 0:12:26.200 --> 0:12:28.960 and while he was running errands on March sixteenth, his 0:12:29.040 --> 0:12:31.040 plan was to visit a Maam Jamil to give him 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:34.360 a heads up. The Western mass did under a man 0:12:34.480 --> 0:12:38.440 Jamil had armed security patrols, and AmAm Jamil had developed 0:12:38.440 --> 0:12:41.439 a reputation over the years for pushing out drug dealers. 0:12:41.920 --> 0:12:44.800 Otis just wanted to stop by to say, hey, we're 0:12:44.800 --> 0:12:46.760 going to be moving into the area, but we don't 0:12:46.760 --> 0:12:51.160 want any business with your community. Otis said he parked 0:12:51.160 --> 0:12:53.240 his car outside the mass did and the brothers told 0:12:53.320 --> 0:12:56.880 him AmAm Jamial wasn't around. He stuck around for prayer 0:12:56.880 --> 0:13:01.000 and he chatted with the brothers afterward. Actually, he realized 0:13:01.080 --> 0:13:03.160 it was getting late, and so he walked across the 0:13:03.200 --> 0:13:05.839 street to a Man Jamil's store, hoping he'd may be 0:13:05.960 --> 0:13:08.439 shown up, But the lights were off and the doors 0:13:08.440 --> 0:13:12.520 were locked. As Otis was walking away, the deputies pulled up. 0:13:13.320 --> 0:13:16.080 They got out and told Otis to put up his hands. 0:13:20.080 --> 0:13:23.240 Otis said he tried to explain himself, said he wasn't 0:13:23.280 --> 0:13:26.160 breaking into the store or anything, that he was looking 0:13:26.200 --> 0:13:29.000 for the owner, but one of the deputies had already 0:13:29.040 --> 0:13:31.560 drawn his gun and was screaming out orders. 0:13:32.160 --> 0:13:34.720 So it's like two half of mails. Either one of 0:13:34.800 --> 0:13:38.559 us are back and now, and before I knew it, it 0:13:38.520 --> 0:13:40.560 had just escalated. I knew I had a gun on me, 0:13:40.640 --> 0:13:43.280 I'm all house arrest, I got so this is gonna 0:13:43.280 --> 0:13:45.520 send me right back to prison. It just wasn't happen, 0:13:46.520 --> 0:13:49.920 and I did what I felt that I had to 0:13:49.960 --> 0:13:52.920 do at the time. I pulled out my gun and fired. 0:13:53.679 --> 0:13:57.160 Both deputies fired back, and Otis was hitting the arm. 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:00.480 He ran to his car, which was parked across the 0:14:00.520 --> 0:14:03.640 street with a trunk full of guns, remember, and he 0:14:03.679 --> 0:14:08.440 grabbed an M fourteen, a semi automatic rifle. Otis said 0:14:08.440 --> 0:14:11.280 that Kenchin was being more aggressive than English, who was 0:14:11.320 --> 0:14:13.960 calling for help on his radio. So Otis went hard 0:14:14.000 --> 0:14:16.640 after Kenchin, who tried to take cover behind the black 0:14:16.640 --> 0:14:20.240 Mercedes that was parked on the street. Then Kenchin fell, 0:14:20.880 --> 0:14:22.160 Otis walked over to him. 0:14:22.640 --> 0:14:25.240 I remember him telling me that he had a child 0:14:25.440 --> 0:14:28.000 and he was explaining to me, man, don't do it. 0:14:28.440 --> 0:14:30.200 You know, I got a little girl, and he was 0:14:30.200 --> 0:14:32.720 telling the other stuff. And at the time, I mean, 0:14:32.760 --> 0:14:35.520 you just shot me. You don't understand, like you know, 0:14:35.760 --> 0:14:38.080 we don't you know, we don't flit to the point 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.960 of no retire. Now you just you know, shot me. 0:14:41.000 --> 0:14:43.440 I'm sitting up here a bloody mess. I'm bleeding on 0:14:43.520 --> 0:14:45.520 the head and also so I'm thinking that I'll shot 0:14:45.520 --> 0:14:48.440 in the head. But it wasn't a bullet at all. 0:14:48.600 --> 0:14:51.120 It was a piece of land from the car that 0:14:51.320 --> 0:14:54.800 had large in the side of my head. So but 0:14:54.920 --> 0:14:57.280 I didn't know it at the time. So I stood 0:14:57.280 --> 0:14:59.440 over him and I shot him in the growing. 0:15:00.400 --> 0:15:02.960 Otis said. He turned to find English and saw him 0:15:03.040 --> 0:15:05.760 running away toward the field next to the mast Jit 0:15:06.560 --> 0:15:10.760 and then shot and bloody. Amped up on adrenaline, Otis 0:15:10.800 --> 0:15:13.720 forgot his car was there and started looking for help. 0:15:14.200 --> 0:15:16.280 Well, you go through a situation like that, you know, 0:15:16.480 --> 0:15:19.360 when you're shooting at people and people are shooting at you, 0:15:19.360 --> 0:15:23.200 you can't be a little outside of you, said, I'm 0:15:23.200 --> 0:15:24.800 not going to say out of a body's fan, but 0:15:24.840 --> 0:15:26.960 you kind of get outside of yourself. So I got 0:15:26.960 --> 0:15:28.720 a little confused for a second. 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:35.120 Eventually, Otis came back to his senses, he found his car, 0:15:35.520 --> 0:15:42.720 and he drove home. This was a wild story, but 0:15:42.840 --> 0:15:45.480 in some ways it made more sense than the story 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:48.920 we had heard about AmAm Jamil. Otis had a track 0:15:48.960 --> 0:15:53.000 record of shooting people with little provocation. He was a hothead, 0:15:53.480 --> 0:15:54.960 and he didn't have as much to lose as a 0:15:55.000 --> 0:16:00.440 Mam Jamial. Still, something was definitely off about the guy 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.480 he'd pled guilty to writing letters to public officials threatening 0:16:03.520 --> 0:16:06.880 to kill them unless they accepted his confession and freedom. 0:16:06.880 --> 0:16:11.720 Ma'am Jamil, that's why he was in prison. But like 0:16:11.760 --> 0:16:14.760 I said, some powerful people were convinced he was telling 0:16:14.800 --> 0:16:17.840 the truth. It helped a Mam Jamil get access to 0:16:17.880 --> 0:16:22.520 a new legal process that could potentially get him out 0:16:22.560 --> 0:16:28.320 of prison. It took the judge seven years to reject 0:16:28.320 --> 0:16:32.280 a Ma'am Jamil's habeas appeal, the one in Tattnall County, Georgia, 0:16:32.480 --> 0:16:34.640 where it came out that the ankle monitor did not 0:16:34.760 --> 0:16:38.760 prove Otis Jackson was at home during the shootout. The 0:16:38.840 --> 0:16:44.840 judge rejected the appeal in twenty eleven. AmAm Jamil's lawyers 0:16:44.920 --> 0:16:48.880 kept at it, though, appealing to higher courts. But I'll 0:16:48.920 --> 0:16:52.320 just tell you now, all of those habeas appeals were rejected. 0:16:53.200 --> 0:16:55.280 The odds of an inmate winning any type of release 0:16:55.320 --> 0:16:59.400 on a habeas claim are very very slim. But then 0:16:59.640 --> 0:17:03.480 in Yeahanuary of twenty twenty, almost two decades after the shootout, 0:17:03.960 --> 0:17:06.760 a new path opened up for a Mam Jmial, new 0:17:06.760 --> 0:17:14.160 hope for him and his supporters. The Fulton County DA 0:17:14.280 --> 0:17:19.000 created something called the Conviction Integrity Unit, or the CiU. 0:17:19.840 --> 0:17:22.800 It's a division within the prosecutor's office that examines cases 0:17:22.800 --> 0:17:26.520 from the past looking for wrongful convictions that could be overturned. 0:17:28.160 --> 0:17:30.480 When the civil rights legend Andrew Young wrote a letter 0:17:30.480 --> 0:17:33.880 to the Fulton County DA claiming a Maam Jimial was innocent, 0:17:34.359 --> 0:17:38.639 he sent it to the CiU. Specifically, Otis Jackson was 0:17:38.640 --> 0:17:41.760 a focus of the letter. Young wrote that Otis matched 0:17:41.800 --> 0:17:45.840 some eyewitnesses descriptions of the shooter. Otis was violating his 0:17:45.880 --> 0:17:48.280 parole and so he had a motive for shooting the deputies. 0:17:49.320 --> 0:17:51.920 He had ammunition at home that matched the ammunition used 0:17:51.960 --> 0:17:55.000 during the shooting, and he had been convicted of violent 0:17:55.040 --> 0:17:59.920 crimes in the past. It seems like Young's letter influenced 0:17:59.960 --> 0:18:03.240 the Fulton County DA because we later learned the CiU 0:18:03.359 --> 0:18:06.520 was reviewing a Ma'am Jamil's case and the ma'm Jamil 0:18:06.560 --> 0:18:10.480 supporters in other corners. They focused on Otis, too, mounting 0:18:10.560 --> 0:18:14.520 campaigns to try to convince big media organizations like CNN 0:18:14.840 --> 0:18:18.679 to interview him. A coalition of twenty eight Muslim American 0:18:18.800 --> 0:18:21.919 organizations sent a letter to the Department of Justice that 0:18:22.040 --> 0:18:26.199 also made Otis's confession a focus. But to convince the 0:18:26.240 --> 0:18:30.080 DA's office or the courts, Otis's confession alone would never 0:18:30.119 --> 0:18:34.080 be enough, especially after all these years. It wouldn't be 0:18:34.160 --> 0:18:37.400 enough to convince me either. Any good journalists would want 0:18:37.400 --> 0:18:41.679 to find corroboration for a bombshell like this, so we 0:18:41.720 --> 0:18:43.560 set out to try to find people who Otis had 0:18:43.640 --> 0:18:46.080 encountered or spoken to in the aftermath of the shooting. 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:52.480 I'm coming down from the durn them was now the situation. 0:18:52.040 --> 0:18:55.879 That started in the When Otis returned to his mom's house, 0:18:55.920 --> 0:18:59.080 the phone rang. A parole officer was calling to check 0:18:59.119 --> 0:19:02.040 on him. Otis told the officer he was just getting 0:19:02.080 --> 0:19:04.360 home from work, but the officer said he still had 0:19:04.359 --> 0:19:08.520 to market as a violation. But Otis's mind was elsewhere. 0:19:09.200 --> 0:19:12.680 He said he was in pain, bleeding from the gunshot wounds. 0:19:13.080 --> 0:19:15.760 He called a neighbor, a nurse who lived across the street, 0:19:15.880 --> 0:19:18.280 to come over and fix them up, and two other 0:19:18.280 --> 0:19:21.320 women came to lend a hand. A bullet was lodged 0:19:21.320 --> 0:19:24.840 in Otis's shoulder, and they extracted it stitched him up. 0:19:25.680 --> 0:19:28.960 One of the women gave Otis some painkillers, but advill 0:19:29.080 --> 0:19:31.680 or tile and all after a bullet wound. I'm thinking 0:19:31.720 --> 0:19:32.960 this had to be excruciating. 0:19:34.600 --> 0:19:37.200 Luckily for me, I just happened to know these people, 0:19:37.280 --> 0:19:40.000 because if I had not, probably would have died. 0:19:43.600 --> 0:19:46.560 The morning after the shootout, Otis said he gave all 0:19:46.600 --> 0:19:49.119 the guns he had to his brother, told him he 0:19:49.119 --> 0:19:51.960 didn't want them because he was on parole, and then 0:19:52.000 --> 0:19:55.080 he called a reporter at a local TV station. Otis 0:19:55.119 --> 0:19:57.120 was worried and Mam Jamil was going to be arrested 0:19:57.119 --> 0:19:57.680 for the shooting. 0:19:58.160 --> 0:20:00.320 You got to understand when they when they start artist 0:20:00.359 --> 0:20:04.480 saying that this guy did it and they were looking 0:20:04.520 --> 0:20:07.359 for this they were looking for him. The first thing 0:20:07.400 --> 0:20:09.600 that brought to my mind was, damn, man, they're about 0:20:09.640 --> 0:20:11.040 to arrest the wrong person. 0:20:11.200 --> 0:20:13.359 I don't want this guy to go to jail for 0:20:13.440 --> 0:20:16.040 something I did. That's not right. 0:20:16.840 --> 0:20:19.680 When the reporter showed up, Otis said he offered to 0:20:19.680 --> 0:20:22.000 give him the bloody clothes he had worn during the shootout, 0:20:22.600 --> 0:20:26.000 but the reporter said, look, if you do that, then 0:20:26.040 --> 0:20:28.919 I'd have to turn them over to the police. Otis 0:20:28.960 --> 0:20:31.399 didn't like that idea, so he didn't give the reporter 0:20:31.520 --> 0:20:35.960 the clothes, but he still agreed to an interview. Meanwhile, 0:20:36.520 --> 0:20:39.800 since Otis had violated his parole, law enforcement came to 0:20:39.840 --> 0:20:42.840 search his house, and a few weeks later he was 0:20:42.880 --> 0:20:49.200 shipped back to Nevada. So that's Otis's story of the 0:20:49.280 --> 0:20:54.480 aftermath of the shooting. Plenty of leads to chase down right. First, 0:20:54.520 --> 0:20:56.320 we went to the block where Otis was staying with 0:20:56.400 --> 0:20:58.840 his mom back in March of two thousand and we 0:20:58.920 --> 0:21:02.080 spoke to some of the neighbors. They confirmed that Otis's 0:21:02.160 --> 0:21:04.479 mother lived there, but they didn't know any nurses who 0:21:04.520 --> 0:21:09.359 lived nearby in two thousand. No corroboration there. Then we 0:21:09.440 --> 0:21:13.800 got a transcription of an interview with Otis's brother. He said, nah, 0:21:13.960 --> 0:21:17.920 Otis never gave me any guns. No corroboration there, But 0:21:18.040 --> 0:21:20.120 maybe that's what anyone would say to protect a brother 0:21:20.160 --> 0:21:21.919 who gave him a bunch of guns and then confess 0:21:21.960 --> 0:21:25.080 to a murder that happened the night before. So next 0:21:25.400 --> 0:21:27.520 we tracked down a recording in the local news segment 0:21:27.560 --> 0:21:30.600 featuring Otis. One of the man Jamil supporters gave it 0:21:30.680 --> 0:21:33.760 to us. They had been monitoring and recording TV news 0:21:33.840 --> 0:21:36.400 after the shootout. You are watching eleven or five news 0:21:36.440 --> 0:21:42.120 at Viberi as a suspect in the shootings of two deputies. 0:21:42.160 --> 0:21:43.399 By its extradition back to. 0:21:43.440 --> 0:21:46.919 Georgia, old friends paint a different picture of a man 0:21:47.000 --> 0:21:47.960 accused of murder. 0:21:48.359 --> 0:21:51.680 He took a community that was infested with prostitution and 0:21:51.840 --> 0:21:55.800 drugs and drug dealers, and he cleaned it up. Good 0:21:55.840 --> 0:21:56.320 evening again. 0:21:56.400 --> 0:21:58.960 I'm de Otis goes by Silas. Muhammad in the segment 0:22:00.080 --> 0:22:01.760 text at the bottom of the screen calls him a 0:22:01.920 --> 0:22:05.280 friend of Alamine. From what we've heard, when Otis was 0:22:05.320 --> 0:22:07.360 in Atlanta, he might have stopped by the mass jed 0:22:07.440 --> 0:22:09.880 to mix a lot a few times, but a friend 0:22:09.920 --> 0:22:13.240 of Alamine. That was probably local TV news stretching the 0:22:13.320 --> 0:22:15.960 facts a bit. The story was set up to be 0:22:16.000 --> 0:22:18.920 about someone close to AmAm Jamil and the Weston Masjid 0:22:19.359 --> 0:22:21.960 who argued to Ma'am Jamil was a peaceful religious leader. 0:22:22.680 --> 0:22:26.920 I know that Jamil a Lamine did not shoot any 0:22:27.040 --> 0:22:29.000 police officers that night. 0:22:30.440 --> 0:22:34.280 Would you put your hand on the Kuran and say that, yes, 0:22:34.359 --> 0:22:34.920 Sir I would. 0:22:35.840 --> 0:22:37.960 Would you stake your life on him, yes, Sir I will. 0:22:39.480 --> 0:22:41.520 The segment buried at the very end what I would 0:22:41.520 --> 0:22:43.960 consider the most important information from the whole thing. 0:22:44.560 --> 0:22:48.080 Solace. Mohammad says that there are people in this community 0:22:48.119 --> 0:22:51.360 who revere and respect and love Jamil Abdullah A Lamine, 0:22:51.680 --> 0:22:53.520 and that there are people here who would do anything 0:22:53.600 --> 0:22:57.520 to protect him, that includes shooting at Fulton County Sheriff's deputies. 0:22:57.640 --> 0:23:00.880 Do you mark if silace, Mohammed says, Alameine didn't pull 0:23:00.920 --> 0:23:02.400 the trigger, does he know who did? 0:23:02.840 --> 0:23:03.000 Well? 0:23:03.040 --> 0:23:05.760 I asked him that and he said he would not 0:23:05.880 --> 0:23:09.119 answer for two reasons. He said he fears self incrimination 0:23:09.560 --> 0:23:12.119