Recently in Cameron Brown Category

An appellate court has declined to review post-trial rulings in Cameron Brown's murder case in which a judge refused to dismiss or decrease the charges or set bail.

Brown appealed to the 2nd District Court of Appeal on March 30, and it denied his petition on April 8.

Brown, 48, can still take the case to the state Supreme Court.

Brown appeared in Los Angeles Superior Court on Wednesday for a pretrial hearing, but it was postponed until June 2, according to Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum.

Two juries have deadlocked on charges against Brown, who is accused of killing his Lauren Sarene-Key, his 4-year-old daughter, by throwing her off a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff on Nov. 8, 2000. He claims the 4-year-old slipped.

He has remained jailed without bail since his arrest in 2001 after a grand jury indicted him for murder with the special circumstances allegation of killing for financial gain and lying in wait.

He faces the possibility of life in prison without the possibility of parole if convicted.

Cameron Brown was scheduled for a pretrial hearing today, but it was postponed until March 10 since his defense attorney apparently misscheduled the date.

A quick search with the 2nd District Court of Appeal yielded no results for any appeals of Judge Michael Pastor's decision in January to keep the case going and bail in place.

There are days on the court beat where it seems the only way to get it all done would be to clone myself. Tomorrow's gonna be one of those days. It's not rare for me to be faced with multiple court cases at the same time. It is rare, though, that my conflicting schedule is the result of two very high profile cases both at a pivotal point ... 75 miles apart.

My editor and I have spent the last day or so strategizing. Here's what we came up with:

Thursday morning at 8:30, I will attend the pretrial hearing scheduled for Cameron Brown in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom. At the hearing, his attorney is expected to argue that the first-degree murder charge be thrown out following two hung juries. There may also be discussion related to his bail (which is currently set at No Bail) and his defense attorneys. I will try to update here, and on Twitter, as soon as things are decided. I'll have a story up on the Web as soon as I can.

That means that the preliminary hearing for Tony Lopez Perez, the Redondo Beach man accused of killing Cori Desmond, will forward without me in a San Bernardino courtroom. Unfortunately, no reporters from our sister paper at the San Bernardino Sun are available, either. So, I have made arrangements to interview the prosecutor by phone later in the day, and I will try to get as much information as I can from her regarding the evidence presented.

Stay tuned, tomorrow's gonna be interesting.

I get mail:

"I would like to comment about the October 6th story. On page A-13 2nd paragraph, it says: "before plunging face-down into the 'icy' Pacific Ocean."

Isn't that somewhat dramatic?  ICY PACIFIC OCEAN?  When was the last time there was ice in the Pacific Ocean in this area?  Come now Denise, your choice of words is ridiculous.

Dave Kingsley, Torrance"

 

Getting reports from City News Service out of Judge Michael Pastor's courtroom that Pastor found that almost all the jurors engaged in misconduct related to the use of an online definition for the word "malice," but he found that the misconduct was not prejudicial to the case and did not cause bias. He sternly admonished the jurors to follow his orders - especially the one about no outside research or consultation of reference materials - and sent them back in to deliberate.