Deliberations in Retrial of Alleged Cop Killer Begin

Jury deliberations began Thursday in the murder retrial of John George Brown after attorneys finished closing arguments that offered starkly different versions of a bloody 1980 Garden Grove shootout that left a police officer dead and four other people injured.

Brown was sentenced to death in 1982 after a jury convicted him of killing 27-year-old Donald Reed, who with three other officers tried to arrest him at a bar on drug and assault charges.

The California Supreme Court overturned his conviction in 1998.

The first jury was not told of a test that showed possible traces of PCP in Brown’s bloodstream.

Attorneys who appealed Brown’s conviction argued that the drug test could sway jurors about Brown’s mental state and could support a conclusion that the crime was not premeditated.

During his one-hour closing argument in a Santa Ana courtroom, Assistant Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown said that Brown, 51, should be convicted again because the main allegations have not been refuted: that Brown shot his way out of the bar because he feared going to prison.

But Brown’s attorney, George Peters, questioned the credibility of witnesses and said the physical evidence does not support the prosecution’s findings.

He cited the Supreme Court’s ruling that blood-test evidence had been improperly excluded from the original trial and said many questions still remain.