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