Man in Plea Deal Admits Killing Girlfriend’s Foster Baby

A 30-year-old Pacoima man charged with the beating death of his girlfriend’s 9-month-old foster son pleaded guilty Friday to voluntary manslaughter in an agreement with prosecutors.

Don Marvin Brown originally had been charged with murder and child endangering in the Sept. 30 death of Brandon Courtney Fields, who was found dead in the Sylmar apartment of Brown’s girlfriend, Deborah Hodges, 31.

The Los Angeles County district attorney’s office accepted Brown’s plea to the lesser charge because of evidentiary problems that would have made it difficult to get a conviction, Deputy Dist. Atty. Lisa Kahn said.

In return for the guilty plea, prosecutors agreed to seek a sentence of no more that six years in prison. Van Nuys Superior Court Judge David P. Yaffee scheduled sentencing for Aug. 3.

Prosecutors said the death occurred when Hodges left the baby alone with Brown on Sept. 30 to pick up a pizza and rent some videocassettes. Brown told police he discovered the baby was not breathing and tried to save it with cardiopulmonary resuscitation, Kahn said.

Police and paramedics at first attributed the death to sudden infant death syndrome, officials said. But Brown was arrested Oct. 5 after a coroner’s autopsy discovered that several of the infant’s internal organs had been ruptured, apparently by deliberate blows.

Kahn said the baby and his sister, Fredwayna, 4, were placed in Hodges’ custody in March, 1987, because their natural mother was a heroin addict. Hodges, a friend of the mother, was being evaluated as a foster mother by Los Angeles County officials at the time of the baby’s death, Kahn said.