In or Out Of the Game?

This, from a 1996 affidavit supporting an arrest warrant for James on a charge of first-degree murder while armed:

Pig walked across the street towards Wayne, who was on the east side of the street and asked Wayne for a gun. Wayne gave the gun to Pig. As Pig was coming back to where A.J. was at, A.J. stated to Pig, "There's the M.F., right there on the corner. I bet you won't go down there and do him." Pig then walked up to the vehicle at the corner of 5th and S Streets, to the . . . driver's side and shot John Sylvester Fairfax who was seated in the car.

Charge dismissed.

This, from a 1998 grand jury indictment:

Anthony James, also known as "A.J.", within the District of Columbia, while armed with a pistol or firearm, purposely and with deliberate and premeditated malice, killed Gerald Evans, by shooting him with a pistol or firearm on or about March 29, 1995, thereby causing injuries from which Gerald Evans died on or about March 30, 1995.

Charge dismissed.

This, from another 1998 grand jury indictment:

After Rico McLaughlin was convicted and sentenced, Anthony James, also known as "A.J.", a close associate and personal friend of Rico McLaughlin, contacted his longtime friend Tyrone Sanders, also known as "Ty," and solicited him to kill Thomas White because Thomas White had testified for the government.

James was found not guilty.

Donald Bell spent many years chasing James, first as a District police vice-squad officer and then as a homicide detective. "I can put it like this: the people in the Brentwood area, all his peers, they feared him. To them, he was big."

Bell said James controlled what at the time was a drug corridor along Adams and Downing streets NE. "In order for him to survive, he had to establish a reputation," Bell said, and to do that he had to frighten his rivals. Bell, who retired in 2001, spent a lot of time in Brentwood and had good sources in the neighborhood. All he heard was "how wicked" A.J. could be.

Bell investigated the Thomas White killing for which James was acquitted of conspiracy and premeditated-murder charges. The case fit a pattern of homicides in the area that told a lot about the 'hood culture that was developing. "As police got smarter," Bell said, "they got smarter." Witnesses learned they didn't have to say anything, that they could just "wait you out," as Bell put it, even though he and his colleagues would keep them downtown for hours, squeezing them for information and using various forms of leverage. The greater pressure was back in the neighborhood, where the Anthony Jameses were growing larger with each violent crime that went unpunished.