Slain Officer’s Family Is Still Awaiting Justice

The governor who may have to decide whether Garden Grove cop killer John George Brown is executed is probably still in college.

Brown has already avoided the executioner during 17 years of appeals. Chances are we’ll be deep into the new millennium before he has to sweat out any decision from the governor’s office.

A second jury next month could renew Brown’s original 1982 death verdict, at a new penalty-only trial. But even if it does, Brown will start at ground zero on a new round of appeals. Plus, he’s still barely more than halfway through the appellate system on his first appeal on his original guilty verdict.

Now 51, Brown may die of natural causes before lethal injection.

“If he’s sentenced to death again, we’re easily looking at another 15 years of appeals before he’s executed,” said Deputy Atty. Gen. Bob Foster.

What that really means is 30-plus years of waiting for closure for the family of the slain officer--and for the victims who survived Brown’s shooting spree.

Here’s What Happened

It’s hard to believe anybody in any branch of government expected the system to work this way.

Certainly not his prosecutor, Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan F. Brown.

“Never in my wildest dreams did I ever imagine that (John George) Brown would still be alive today,” said the prosecutor. And that quote was printed in The Times eight years ago!

If you aren’t familiar with the Brown case, here’s what happened:

On June 9, 1980, several Garden Grove police officers, some of them reserves, entered the Cripple Creek Saloon on Garden Grove Boulevard after learning Brown was inside. An ex-convict and a well-known outlaw biker, Brown was wanted on several warrants for failure to make court appearances in assault and drug-related cases.

Brown started to leave the bar peacefully with the officers, but then suddenly pulled a .22-caliber pistol he had hidden in a jacket and began firing at them to escape.

Officer Donald Reed, just 27, was fatally wounded. Brown also shot two other police officers and two bar patrons, who all survived. After a countywide manhunt, he was discovered hiding in bushes outside the bar.

Brown’s first-degree murder conviction was a slam dunk. The only real issue at his 1982 trial was whether he should receive the death penalty. Once jurors heard about his lengthy criminal history, including an earlier assault on a police officer in Florida, that decision became a slam dunk too.

A Test for PCP

One thing, however, that Brown’s jurors never heard about:

Though Brown denied to police he was using the mind-altering drug PCP at the time of his arrest, he was given a preliminary screening test for PCP. That preliminary test showed he could have been on PCP. So a more thorough, and more accurate, test was given. That one came up negative. Jurors learned about the more thorough test, but not the preliminary test.

Brown’s first trial attorney says he certainly would have argued Brown had acted under the influence of PCP if he’d known about the first test. Law enforcement officials say that information was turned over to the defense. But after a special hearing many years later, the courts found that it may not have been.

My guess is it wouldn’t have made an ounce of difference with Brown’s first jury.

But in a 4-3 decision, the state Supreme Court ordered a new penalty phase trial for Brown, to determine if his death sentence should be renewed, or if he should get life without parole. Opening statements in that trial are scheduled before Superior Court Judge John Ryan on Jan. 3.

I want to emphasize that I’m not criticizing the state Supreme Court’s ruling. Orange County’s own 4th District Court of Appeal Justice Thomas F. Crosby was a substitute on the high court for that issue and voted with the majority; I know he must have considered it more than just the technicality it seems on the surface.

My argument is that 30-plus years is just an insane amount of time to ask victims and their families to have this case riding their shoulders. I know from once interviewing Officer Reed’s mother that the years of waiting have been excruciating for Reed’s parents, widow and two children.

“It’s agony for us when these cases go on so many years,” said Gary Schons, who heads the attorney general’s San Diego office. “I can’t imagine what the victims’ families are going through.”

Yet the Brown case is just one of maybe a dozen death penalty cases in California that might fit that 30-plus years category. The system is almost barbaric in its slowness.

Said Schons: “When we get a new death penalty, we often assign it to the newer attorneys in the office. Because we know they’ll have another five years of experience before they have to write their first brief in the case.”

Maybe a new jury will decide Brown doesn’t deserve the death penalty. But frankly, that’s hard to imagine. Brown’s new trial attorney, George Peters, is highly respected in legal circles here. But it would seem, given the facts of the case, what Brown needs is Siegfried and Roy.

If Brown is sentenced to death again, the case will go right back to Foster in the attorney general’s office. But Foster is blunt that he’ll likely be in retirement before the case is concluded.

“I feel like Sysiphus, rolling that ball up the hill just to see it roll back down again,” Foster said of the Brown case.

The victims left along John George Brown’s trail must feel the same way.

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Jerry Hicks’ column appears Monday and Thursday. Readers may reach Hicks by calling (714) 564-1049 or e-mail to jerry.hicks@latimes.com