Local News in Brief : Westminster : Judge Refuses to Oust Murder Trial Prosecutor

A Municipal Court judge on Thursday rejected an unusual attempt to have a prosecutor thrown off a case during a preliminary hearing for David A. Brown, a former Garden Grove businessman accused of masterminding his wife’s murder.

Defense attorney Joel Baruch, embroiled in a bitter courtroom feud with Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey Robinson, had accused Robinson of harassing and intimidating him to the point that he might not have been able to properly defend Brown.

But Judge Floyd H. Schenk, who has shown increasing frustration with the legal bickering that has dominated the Brown proceeding, denied Baruch’s motion to have Robinson removed from the case. After a long hearing, Schenk rejected Baruch’s allegations point by point.

Prosecutors charge that in 1985 Patricia A. Bailey, Brown’s former sister-in-law and current wife, helped Brown plan the murder of Linda Brown, then his wife, and set up his 14-year-old daughter, Cinnamon, to take the blame. Bailey is expected to testify against Brown today.

Cinnamon Brown has spent the last 3 years in a California Youth Authority facility for the murder but now claims that her father made her kill her stepmother. She is the prosecution’s prime witness.