Prosecutors Seek Death for Al-Amin

The penalty phase of Jamil Al-Amin's murder trial resumes Tuesday, following stirring testimony from the widow of a slain Fulton County sheriff's deputy. Prosecutors are seeking the death penalty for Al-Amin, convicted last Saturday of killing Fulton deputy Ricky Kinchen in March 2000. Kinchen's widow, Sherese Kinchen, took the stand Monday to read her Victim Impact Statement to the jury."Ricky was not only my husband. He was my friend for 18 years. He was my confidant and my rock and now he's gone. Some days, I just sit and cry. Some days, I think Ricky will walk through that door at any moment, but I know he won't. So, I wipe my tears and stay strong for my children, because I know that they hurt too," she told jurors.Kinchen and Deputy Aldranon English were gunned down when they sought to serve a warrant on Al-Amin in Atlanta's West End. English survived and identified Al-Amin, the former Black Panther H. Rap Brown, as the killer during the trial.Sherese Kinchen spoke of how she and her two daughters, ages 11 and 7, miss Ricky. She said a part of her died with her husband."It has often been very difficult for me to carry on life without Ricky and it is only the love from my children that keeps me going," she said.After her testimony, the defense put friends of Al-Amin on the stand in a plea for mercy, saying the cold-blooded cop-killer portrayed by prosecutors is not the man they know."A peaceful person. That's the way I remember Jamil," said Cleveland Sellers, the Director of the African-American Studies Program at the University of South Carolina. Dr. Sellers testified that he knew Al-Amin 40 years ago when they were both college students getting involved in the sit-ins and Freedom Rides throughout the South. Sellers said Al-Amin risked his own life to register Blacks to vote in Alabama.Prosecutors painted a different picture, saying the murder, "justifies demands, cries out for the death penalty."They sought the judge's permission to put three New York City police officers on the stand. The officers were to testify that 30 years ago, the defendant shot and wounded them when they were arresting him.Prosecutors say Al-Amin should not live to shoot any more cops. The judge ruled that jurors would only be allowed to see the paperwork on the older case but not hear from the New York City officers, who had traveled to Atlanta for the sentencing phase of the trial. The jury's deliberations on Al-Amin's sentence will not likely begin before Wednesday. Al-Amin faces three possibilities: death by lethal injection, life in prison without parole, or life in prison with the possibility of parole.