After two hung juries, third Franklin County jury convicts man in imam kidnapping case
After two different juries could not reach a verdict in trials last year, a third jury in Franklin County Common Pleas Court convicted a Columbus man of kidnapping a local imam in a botched, fatal robbery attempt.
The charges stemmed from the shooting death of 48-year-old Imam Mohamed Hassan Adam, a prominent figure in the Somali community, in December 2021.
Isaiah Brown-Miller's defense attorney, Lumumba Toure McCord, had said after the second trial ended in a hung jury that county prosecutors wouldn't find 12 jurors willing to convict the 24-year-old Northeast Side man.
The third jury deliberated for about 14 hours across Thursday and Friday. On Friday afternoon, the jurors reported they were at an impasse. Common Pleas Judge Karen Phipps, who presided over the trial, told them to keep trying.
About an hour after the jury said they were at an impasse, Judge Phipps brought the defendant and attorneys into the courtroom for a short on-the-record conversation. During that conversation, Brown-Miller’s attorney said they had been offered a plea deal by prosecutors, but Brown-Miller said he would not be taking it.
About a half-hour after that, the jury returned the guilty verdict on the kidnapping and aggravated robbery charges with gun specifications against Brown-Miller.
Brown-Miller was not charged with murder. In October, a different jury convicted his codefendant, 47-year-old John Wooden, of Columbus' Franklinton neighborhood, of aggravated murder, kidnapping, aggravated robbery, and other charges in Adam's death.
Prosecutors said Wooden, a convicted violent career criminal, shot Adam.
Judge Phipps revoked Brown-Miller's bond on Friday. She will sentence him at a later date. He faces mandatory prison time.
Wooden is scheduled for sentencing on Jan. 30. For aggravated murder, he faces a mandatory sentence of life in prison. Phipps will decide when he is first eligible for parole after at least 20 years.
Adam, an imam at Masjid Abu Hurairah mosque on the Northeast Side, went missing on Dec. 22, 2021 and was found fatally shot on Dec. 24, 2021 near his yellow van in an overgrown lot on Columbus' North Side.
Franklin County prosecutors said during their trials that Wooden and Brown-Miller were attempting to get money from Adam and possibly from the mosque’s funds to which the imam had access.
Adam was seen on surveillance video on the evening of Dec. 22, 2021, attempting to withdraw money from an ATM while accompanied by a man in a white mask.
There were also numerous failed transactions on Cash App, a money-transferring app, from Adam’s cellphone that night, according to prosecutors. Some transactions were for thousands of dollars.
jlaird@dispatch.com
@LairdWrites
This article originally appeared on The Columbus Dispatch: Columbus man convicted of kidnapping imam murdered by codefendant
