Ga. man charged with murdering officer gets life after exam by psychiatrist

January 13, 2009 03:18 AM

By Steve Visser
Atlanta Journal-Constitution

ATLANTA — District Attorney Paul Howard said Monday an ephedra-based diet drug may have played a role in the murder of a police officer.

That revelation, he said, influenced him to agree to take Kenneth Gerald Reese’s plea of guilty in exchange for life imprisonment without parole in the death-penalty trial set to begin this week. The information that the defendant may have suffered a drug-related psychosis came from the prosecution’s own psychiatrist.

“It was problematic for us because that report was presented by our own psychiatrist,” Howard said. “If it is true, then that is bizarre ... and it was the only thing presented as a motive.”

Reese, 31, confessed to ambushing 26-year-old Aaron Blount in April 2003 when he was pulled over for a traffic stop in the Red Oak community in south Fulton County. Investigators who quickly arrested Reese said they did not know why he killed Blount, who had stopped him for erratic driving. Until the murder, Reese had no history of violence or criminal behavior.

Reese emptied one 9 mm pistol into Blount’s patrol car, hitting him once in the shoulder and once in the head, as Blount pulled into a service station on Roosevelt Highway. Police say Reese then got a second 9 mm pistol from his car. The autopsy report says Blount was shot again in the head, at close range.

Howard said he got the psychiatric report last week on the evaluation of Reese performed last fall. He said the evaluation was ordered after defense lawyers told the court they would present a mental health defense.

Defense lawyer Tom West said Reese --- who weighed more than 300 pounds --- had been taking a diet drug containing the chemical ephedra, which some psychiatric research has linked to aggravating existing psychosis when taken in significant doses.

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration banned the use of ephedra, also called ma huang, from over-the-counter dietary supplements in 2004. The chemical, used for weight control and for boosting sports performance and energy, is also linked to a risk for heart attack and stroke.

The state’s psychiatrist contended that Reese wasn’t legally insane because he knew right from wrong at the time of the killing. But he said the drug could have been partly to blame for the violence, according to Howard, and that would mitigate against a death penalty decision by a jury deciding his punishment. A defense-hired psychiatrist said Reese’s brain had a malfunctioning frontal lobe that caused his psychosis.

Howard blamed the judiciary for letting the Reese case languish for six years. He said judges kept recusing themselves because of conflicts with the defense team and since 2005 had not set the case for trial.

Superior Court Judge Alfred Dempsey was assigned the case in 2005 after Judge Rowland Barnes was killed by Brian Nichols in March that year.

“We have said many times that the disposition of this case was simply taking too long,” Howard said.

The DA said his office did not set the case aside to focus its resources on the Nichols case, which ended in December.

Blount’s old boss, ex-Fulton County police Chief George Coleman, said Monday he was disappointed Howard didn’t seek the death penalty. Coleman said he suspects the failure of Howard’s office to win a death penalty in the Nichols case influenced the outcome of the Reese case.

Many people believed the jury would impose the death penalty on Nichols because he killed a judge, a court reporter, a sheriff’s deputy and a federal agent after he escaped from custody during his rape trial at the Fulton County Courthouse. Nichols was sentenced to life imprisonment without parole when the jury was unable to reach a unanimous decision.

“We have to rely on the wisdom of the district attorney --- we have to go along,” Coleman said. “A lot of people in the community don’t like to hand down the death penalty.”