MINNEAPOLIS -- In a flurry of legal motions filed late yesterday, attorneys in the murder-for-hire case against Qubilah Shabazz profiled an indecisive woman who talked bluntly about murder, then backed out of an alleged plot just weeks before she was indicted on charges of conspiring to kill Nation of Islam leader Louis Farrakhan.
The release of transcripts from FBI wiretaps and a purported confession from Ms. Shabazz, 34, the second eldest daughter of Malcolm X, provided the first inner details of a case that has flared into renewed controversy over the government's reliance on criminal informants.
Charging "outrageous governmental misconduct," defense lawyer William Kunstler asked U.S. District Judge James Rosenbaum to dismiss the charges. Mr. Kunstler also demanded a separate hearing into the actions of the government's main witness, Michael Fitzpatrick, 34.
A veteran informant who slipped in and out of the federal witness protection program, Mr. Fitzpatrick was taped in more than 40 conversations with Ms. Shabazz discussing a plot to murder Minister Farrakhan.
"He was the classic seducer," Mr. Kunstler said, insisting that Ms. Shabazz had talked about a murder attempt only "as a joke" and had tried to persuade Mr. Fitzpatrick to call off his murder attempt.
And prosecutors acknowledged for the first time yesterday that by November 1994 Ms. Shabazz began distancing herself from the plot.
But responding to the defense motions, U.S. Attorney David L. Lillehaug insisted that the "evidence will show that this was not the result of a dramatic improvement in her conscience. Rather, it was because she had spoken with one of Fitzpatrick's roommates and . . . began to suspect that [he] might be an informant and might be tape-recording their calls."