Jury Deadlocked Again Against Man Accused of Throwing Daughter off a Cliff

In the case involving an airline baggage handler accused of throwing his 4-year old daughter off a cliff,  the judge declared a mistrial on Monday after jurors were deadlocked. This is now the 2nd time a jury has been undecided over whether Cameron John Brown threw his young daughter from the bluff top in Rancho Palos Verdes (the prosecutions side) or whether her death was an accident (the defense side). The mother of the girl gasped with hearing the decision that the jury was split down the middle between finding Brown guilty of second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter. Defendant Brown showed little emotion during the hearing. Jury foreman Mark Dreskin, a doctor at Kaiser Permanente, said jurors were disappointed that they were unable to reach a verdict. Although they felt he was responsible for the youn girls death, they were undecided as to whether he intentionally tried to kill her. “Nobody thought he was not guilty,” Dreskin said outside the courtroom. “We had a tough time.”

The Los Angeles County DA office must now decide whether to go after a third trial against Brown, who has been in jail since his arrest in 2003. Outside court, Brown’s attorneys treated the result as a victory and asked for the prosecutors to drop the murder charge. Los Angeles Defense attorney Pat Harris said involuntary manslaughter, which carries a maximum sentence of four years in prison, would have been a more appropriate charge from the outset. “This concept that he took her up there and threw her off the cliff has been roundly rejected,” Harris said. He said he would ask a judge to release Brown on bail. “This is a tragedy both from the fact that the daughter is dead and the fact that a man has been falsely accused and remains in jail.”