In Sing Sing cold case, Five Percent Nation member details fatal inmate stabbing

A beef with a Sing Sing inmate who appeared to disrespect the group Five Percent Nation led to the fatal stabbing of the inmate nearly 30 years ago, a key Five Percenter testified last week at the accused killer's trial.

Steven "Kaseem" Smith, who himself was charged last year in the killing along with Allah-Son-Allah, testified as a cooperating witness. He testified that Son-Allah stabbed Michael "Taboo" Jones on Dec. 24, 1995, a day after Smith, Son-Allah and other Five Percenters agreed that Jones had to be "got rid of."

Smith, 61, pleaded guilty to first-degree murder and second-degree manslaughter last month on the eve of Son-Allah's trial. If his testimony is deemed truthful, the murder charge would be dismissed and he would be sentenced to three to six years in prison for manslaughter.

Five Percent Nation, also known as the Nation of Gods and Earth, formed in the 1960s as an offshoot of the Nation of Islam.

Smith helped lead Five Percent Nation's meetings

On questioning by Assistant District Attorney Brian Bendish, Smith said he learned about Five Percent Nation as a young teenager in Far Rockaway, liked what he heard and was all in by the time he got to prison. When he arrived at Sing Sing in 1989, five years into a murder sentence, there were dozens of adherents in A-Block but the practice was chaotic, he testified. He helped institute monthly large meetings known as "parliaments", as well as informal "ciphers", where members stand in circles to discuss the group's way of life.

Son-Allah, whose given name was Gwyn Cancer, went by El Son at Sing Sing. From Albany, he was in prison on drug charges and according to Smith and others was a member of Five Percent's security team on A Block.

Jones, 32, was serving a sentence for attempted murder. Smith sought to debunk the early theory that Jones had been targeted because he was a Five Percenter who wore a cross against the group's tenets. He said Jones' moniker, Taboo, was not a righteous name — as things like pork and dope were taboo.

Jones first drew the group's attention when he stepped into a cipher uninvited. He backed out when asked, but when an inmate he had been with was challenged over a medallion he was wearing, Smith said Jones stepped back in, showed his own cross, and said nobody was going to stop him from wearing one.

Smith downplayed his role in Five Percent, saying there were no leaders or followers in the group.

That was important for his insistence that he did not direct Jones' killing. He said the group, including him, voted that Jones would be "got rid of", but he suggested that was a loose term that could simply mean forcing his removal from the cellblock.

He said it was up to "security" to come up with the plan and it took shape in the recreation area of M-Gallery the evening of Dec. 24.

Smith said Son-Allah asked him to back him up, and told him he had a weapon mainly in case the men Jones was standing with intervened.

Smith said he he saw Son-Allah approach Jones, raise his arm and then backpedal momentarily. When another Five Percenter appeared to hit Jones on his side to distract him, Son-Allah moved in and stabbed Jones in the chest, Smith testified.

He said he stepped in when he saw Son-Allah and another Five Percenter, Michael Walls, known as He-Allah, trying to continue attacking Jones, who soon lifted his shirt to reveal a bloody wound.

The case went unsolved for nearly three decades until state police and prosecutors reopened the investigation in recent years and began interviewing several of the former inmates, many who had refused to talk while in prison.

Son-Allah was among the few inmates who gave state police investigators a statement following the murder. He acknowledged his participation in the vote and that he helped move the knives away from the scene but insisted that He-Allah was Jones' killer.

Defense questions Smith's credibility

Defense lawyer Angelo MacDonald sought to distinguish his client as a non-violent inmate from Smith and the other Five Percenters who were serving time for murder. Smith acknowledged his belief that all Black men are gods and some, but not all, white men are devils.

One was the man he said he killed with a sawed-off shotgun in Queens in June 1983. He said the man had shown a fellow Five Percenter a gun and said he was going to kill Smith.

"I didn't think I should wait," he testified.

Smith served 35 years and was paroled in 2018. He was living in North Carolina last year at the time of his indictment.

MacDonald took aim at Smith's cooperation agreement, juxtaposing the brief sentence he will likely get with the harsh one he faces for first-degree murder: a minimum of 20-years to life and a maximum of life without parole. The first-degree murder charge was because Smith had already been in prison for a murder conviction.

MacDonald implied that Smith could not be relied upon because he would say anything to satisfy prosecutors and get the shorter prison term.

Son-Allah is charged with second-degree murder and faces up to 25 years to life in prison if convicted. It was unclear whether he will testify when the trial resumes Tuesday before Westchester County Judge George Fufidio.

This article originally appeared on Rockland/Westchester Journal News: In Sing Sing cold case, Five Percent Nation member details stabbing