Co-Defendant Confesses to ’88 Shotgun Slaying : Crime: In surprise testimony, Gregory Lee Hines says his brother was not present when Jorge Rosales was slain.

Gregory Lee Hines dropped a bombshell at his murder trial Tuesday: He confessed.

What’s more, Hines told a Ventura County Superior Court jury that his brother and co-defendant, Alexander Hines, was not present when Jorge Rosales, 17, was shot to death in a Camarillo field three years ago.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Donald C. Glynn, who said the testimony “was a total shock,” implied that Gregory Hines was lying when he said he had acted alone. Glynn suggested that Gregory was taking the heat to spare his brother a murder conviction.

Gregory Hines, 20, had already been strongly linked to the crime by a genetics expert who testified that a mist of blood on Gregory Hines’ shoe had come from the victim’s body.

Although there has been testimony that Alexander Hines, 32, had a motive to kill Rosales, the only evidence putting him at the scene is a single footprint. And the expert witness who testified about the print could say only that it was made by a shoe similar to one that Alexander owned.

“Are you testifying to protect your brother?” Glynn asked Gregory Hines on cross-examination.

“No, I’m not,” he replied. “I figure the truth has to be known.”

Still unexplained is why Alexander Hines fled the Oxnard area after the killing and assumed an alias while living outside Sacramento. His attorney, Deputy Public Defender Robert Willey, said he will present testimony today that Alexander Hines left because of death threats from people who blamed him for the killing.

The Hines brothers were arrested almost immediately after Rosales’ body was found July 17, 1988. But they were released because of insufficient evidence, and both left the area.

Investigators caught up with Alexander in 1989, when he was convicted of a sexual-assault charge and sentenced to 18 years in prison. In December, they tracked down Gregory in Minneapolis, where he was living under an assumed name.

In his opening statement to the jury last week, Glynn said the brothers killed Rosales because they blamed him for an injury that cost their mother an eye. The woman, Beatrix Haynes, was struck by a bottle during an early morning brawl at the family home in Oxnard.

At their preliminary hearing, a witness testified that Alexander Hines was especially upset the morning of the injury and threatened to kill whoever was responsible. After taking Haynes to a hospital, the brothers left with Rosales and returned without him about 90 minutes later, witnesses said.

Shortly afterward, Rosales’ body was found near Central Avenue and the Ventura Freeway, shot twice in the face with a shotgun.

In his testimony Tuesday, Gregory Hines said the three left the hospital together but went to the Hines house, not to the field. He said they were out of beer so he and Rosales left the house to get more. Alexander stayed behind, Gregory Hines said.

While he and Rosales were out, they stopped to fire some shots, Gregory Hines said. Just as Hines was loading the gun, he said, Rosales confessed to throwing the bottle. Hines said he turned and fired.

“I was tripping, man. I just did it,” Hines said on cross-examination.

When Glynn asked whether he intended to kill Rosales, Hines said he didn’t know. “I wasn’t thinking about the consequences,” he said. “But I realized he was dead.”

Hines said he was upset about his mother’s injury. “I knew somebody had hit her and somebody had to pay for it.” He also testified that he had drunk about 18 beers and smoked marijuana before the shooting.

Hines’ testimony not only absolved his brother but tended to reduce his own culpability in the slaying. As is his brother, Gregory Hines is charged with committing a premeditated, first-degree murder. What he admitted Tuesday was an alcohol-influenced, heat-of-passion killing that could be viewed as manslaughter--if the jury believes him.

Glynn declined to discuss the case at length when court adjourned Tuesday. But he acknowledged that he would “have to revise my closing argument.”

The jury is expected to get the case Thursday.