D.A. Won’t Seek Death for Brown

SANTA ANA — The Orange County district attorney’s office, reversing its earlier stance, has decided not to seek the death penalty against David A. Brown, the Anaheim Hills man who is accused of orchestrating his wife’s murder and then hiring a hit man to try to kill key figures in his prosecution.

Prosecutors would not disclose the reasons for their unusual move in a closed meeting Friday, citing only “new information” raised by the two lawyers who recently took over Brown’s defense.

At the same time, the new defense team is dropping an earlier bid to remove local prosecutors from the case. But district attorney’s officials denied suggestions that any deal was struck.

Brown’s previous lawyers vigorously had sought to replace the county prosecutors with state prosecutors after two district attorney’s officials and a key witness allegedly were targeted for assassination by Brown. Brown allegedly arranged the unsuccessful hit while in Orange County Jail on charges that he masterminded the murder of his wife in Garden Grove in 1985.

According to prosecutors, Brown set up his teen-age daughter to take the fall for the 1985 murder, collected $835,000 from the victim’s insurance and married her sister.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Bryan Brown, who heads the homicide unit, said: “I’m not real comfortable going into the details, but we heard (from Brown’s new lawyers) about a number of factors that we weren’t aware of. That caused us to reverse our decision to seek the death penalty against him.”

In a related development, a lawsuit between Brown’s former and current defense attorneys was dropped last week.

Richard Schwartzberg, Brown’s current attorney, agreed to give $500 to charity for Cystic Fibrosis to settle slander claims against him by the man he replaced as defense attorney, Joel Baruch.

Baruch, in a civil lawsuit brought this summer in Orange County Superior Court, claimed Schwartzberg slandered him by telling other lawyers in court that Baruch had taken part in the plot to have members of the prosecution killed.

Schwartzberg says he was joking. But he said he agreed to make the $500 donation because “it wasn’t worth the time and money to fight this. (The settlement) was a way for both sides to save face.” He also agreed to apologize.

With the change in attorneys causing delays, Brown is not expected to go to trial until next year.