Painkillers may have confused deputy looking at police lineup

ATLANTA -- A wounded sheriff's deputy likely was disoriented by painkillers when he identified the former black-power radical once known as H. Rap Brown as the gunman who shot him and killed his partner, a toxicology expert testified Wednesday.

Fulton County Deputy Aldranon English would have been confused by the morphine and other drugs given to him in a hospital when he selected Jamil Abdullah Al-Amin from a photo lineup, said Dr. David Benjamin.

The doctor was called by Al-Amin's attorneys to support their argument that someone else shot the deputies with an assault rifle when they tried to serve Al-Amin with a warrant on March 16, 2000.

Al-Amin is charged with murder in the death of Deputy Ricky Kinchen and aggravated assault in the wounding of English in Atlanta's West End neighborhood. His lawyers, who started calling witnesses Tuesday, had hoped to show that Al-Amin, facing only three months in jail on charges of theft by receiving and impersonating an officer, likely would not have committed murder to avoid arrest.

Plea offer rejected

But former Cobb County prosecutor Joel Pugh testified that Al-Amin rejected a plea offer and failed to appear for a Jan. 24, 2000, court date on the charges. Kinchen and English were serving a warrant on Al-Amin for missing that court date.

Defense attorneys also called a 911 operator who took several calls on the night of the shooting. In one call, about 90 minutes after the shooting, the caller said a bleeding man was "begging for a ride," and that the man might have been involved in the shooting, operator Helen Lane testified.

Al-Amin was uninjured when he was captured in Alabama four days after the shooting.

The defense also recalled Fulton deputy Jerome Hull, who was among the first officers to arrive at the scene. Hull has earlier testified that Kinchen said of the shooter, "I shot him, I think I shot him."

On Tuesday, defense attorneys showed Hull a video in which he told Atlanta police detective that Kinchen had said: "I know I shot him."