American Dream: Alive Again? -- Murder Conviction Overturned For Immigrant From Ethiopia

It took him five years to save enough money to buy his own version of the American Dream: a corner gas station. Ethiopian immigrant Zeleke Kassahun thought it would be his ticket to the good life.

But within weeks after opening the station in 1991, Kassahun fatally shot a teenagerand was charged with murder, even though he said the youth was a shoplifter and had attacked him. Kassahun's American dream took a nightmarish turn.

Kassahun has spent the past 33 months in prison, maintaining that the shooting was self-defense.

The state Court of Appeals this week supported him, overturning his 1992 conviction and sending the case back to King County Superior Court. Deputy prosecutor Kerry Keefe said the decision was being reviewed. Her office must decide within 30 days whether to retry Kassahun or dismiss the charges.

"I'm in a state of shock from happiness," Kassahun said yesterday from a state prison facility that he did not want named. Kassahun said he recently had been moved from the Reformatory in Monroe after inmate friends of the shooting victim threatened his life.

"I've been in a big, dark tunnel, and I thought there was no way out. But there were people who listened."

Kassahun's attorney, Michael Nance, called the reversal a "welcome development in what's been a four-year nightmare."

Kassahun, 39, immigrated to the United States in the mid-1980s. He drove a taxi for five years and saved $15,000, which he used to buy, along with two partners, the Texaco Rainier Express Lane on Rainier Avenue South, near South Dearborn Street. Within three weeks, the shooting took place.

The Court of Appeals ruling, filed Monday, described the incident:

On Aug. 4, 1991, Jesse Walker, 19, and four friends tried to steal beer from Kassahun's gas station. Kassahun chased them away by pulling out a gun, but not before Walker had thrown a beer bottle at him. Kassahun claimed the group was part of a shoplifting ring that routinely stole from his station.

Ten minutes later, Walker and a female friend, Deleava Combs, returned to the station. A fight broke out between Kassahun, Walker and Combs. The fight moved outside, and Walker allegedly pushed and hit Kassahun, and at one point Walker threw a large metal ashtray at the shopkeeper, missing him.

Other witnesses said Kassahun was the aggressor and had initiated the fight by slapping Walker and striking Combs with his gun.

Outside, the fight escalated, and Kassahun shot Walker in the head, killing him instantly.

Kassahun was charged with second-degree murder of Walker and second-degree assault of Combs. A jury in April 1992 hung on the murder charge and acquitted the shopkeeper of assault. A second jury in November 1992 found him guilty of murder, and he was sentenced to more than 10 years in prison.

The Court of Appeals ruled that Kassahun had been convicted because prosecutors wrongfully argued that his "assault" on Combs showed he was the aggressor, and therefore his self-defense claim was not valid.

The fact that Kassahun was acquitted of the second-degree assault charge was never presented in the second trial. Kassahun was, therefore, convicted of murder on the basis of an assault for which he had already been exonerated.