20-Year-Old Murder Case Being Retried

In a reprise of a dramatic murder trial 17 years ago, prosecutors on Monday once again set out to close the books on one of Orange County’s bloodiest shootings, which left a Garden Grove police officer dead and four others injured.

John George Brown, 51, who has spent 15 years on San Quentin’s death row for the killing, was back in a Santa Ana courtroom wearing sunglasses and confined to a wheelchair. His attorneys said he was in poor health, but declined to elaborate.

Authorities said Brown--who also uses the name Gordon Mink--shot and killed 27-year-old Donald Reed in 1980 while he and three fellow officers tried to arrest Brown on drug and assault warrants. The California Supreme Court in 1998 ordered a new trial or a reduced finding of second-degree murder because potentially exculpatory evidence was not introduced in the trial.

Assistant Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown, who prosecuted Brown in 1982 when he was convicted and sentenced to death, found himself giving a familiar opening statement.

The defendant “was on the run,” the prosecutor told jurors Monday. “He had a heart ailment, and it became very important for [him] not to go back to prison.”

Pointing to the semiautomatic .22-caliber pistol that Brown allegedly used to kill Reed and wound others, the prosecutor said, “This gun was his life insurance.”

But Brown’s new defense attorney, George Peters, tried to cast doubt on his client as the shooter by introducing a theory not used in the original trial. Peters alleged that the U.S. Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms was conducting an investigation into an arms deal at the bar where Reed was killed.

“It is crowded [in the bar], wall to wall with people. It’s dark and it’s dim,” Peters said. “The shooter was somebody [standing] very close. Maybe somebody involved with this gun transaction.”

For Reed’s widow and parents, the weight of a new trial so many years after the killing was evident in their serious faces. The officer’s family attended Monday’s proceedings, but declined to talk to reporters.

Reed was shot in the chest June 7, 1980, at the Cripple Creek Saloon on Garden Grove Boulevard.

Garden Grove Police Sgt. Paul McInerny testified Monday that he and his partner, reserve officer Dwight Henninger, recognized Brown’s 1976 Plymouth in the bar’s parking lot from a police flier issued earlier that day. McInerny said he called for backup. Reed and his partner joined them. The four entered the bar about 11:30 p.m. They spotted Brown. When the officers tried to close in on him, Brown walked toward an exit, McInerny said.

“I heard what I thought were fireworks. . . . I saw Don Reed calling for aid. . . . I saw a large amount of blood,” McInerny said.

Reed died within minutes. His partner, Glenn Overly, was wounded. Also injured were Henninger and two bar patrons, one critically.

After a massive manhunt, police found Brown two hours later hiding in a bush near the bar. He was convicted and sent to death row. At issue during his appeal was a blood test performed by the Orange County Sheriff’s Department that showed Brown may have taken PCP, a hallucinogenic drug.

The original jury was told of a second and more thorough blood test that showed no signs of drugs, but not about the first one. Attorneys who appealed Brown’s conviction argued that the first drug test could sway jurors about Brown’s mental state and that perhaps the crime was not premeditated.

The Orange County district attorney’s office decided last year to retry the case, despite the difficulties in reconstructing it. The trial before Orange County Superior Court Judge John J. Ryan is expected to take several weeks.