May 13--A man accused of deliberately throwing his 4-year-old daughter from a Rancho Palos Verdes cliff to avoid paying child support was found guilty of first-degree murder Wednesday, ending a legal saga that has stretched for more than a decade.
As the court clerk read the verdict in a downtown Los Angeles courtroom, Cameron Brown, 53, sat motionless with his eyes locked on the clerk.
The victim's mother, Sarah Key-Marer, gasped and then sobbed with her head tilted up toward the ceiling, tears spilling down her cheeks. Los Angeles County Sheriff's Det. Jeffrey Leslie, who investigated the case from the beginning, turned to smile at Key-Marer, his eyes brimming with tears.
The jury's decision marked the end of the third trial in the case. Two juries previously had deadlocked over whether Brown intentionally threw his daughter, Lauren, from the cliff in 2000 or whether her death was a tragic accident.
After the verdict was read, Key-Marer rushed out to the hallway, hugging jurors.
"Thank you, thank you," she told Greg Apodaca, the jury's foreman.
Key-Marer said after nearly 15 years and three trials all she wanted was for Brown to take responsibility for what happened to their daughter. She kept faith that justice would be served, she said.
"Lauren was our gift from God, the best thing to ever happen to us," she said. "We just learned to live with the pain."
She added: "There are no winners here, certainly not for Cameron's family, and not for ours."
Outside the courtroom, defense attorney Aron Laub said the case should never have been prosecuted as a murder. Brown did not intentionally kill his daughter, he said.
"I believe in our jury system," he said. "But I can't believe that this was a just verdict."
Deputy Dist. Atty. Craig Hum said the jury was able to recognize that Brown was motivated by revenge and a deep hatred for Key-Merer, and that he plotted to kill the girl to hurt her mother.
"No jurors have ever voted not guilty -- it was always a matter of degree," he said. "It's been a long time -- it's been 15 years -- and we finally have justice for Lauren."
Brown's first trial ended in 2006, with two jurors voting to convict him of first-degree murder, eight voting for second-degree murder and two favoring manslaughter. In 2009, a jury split evenly between second-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.
Apodaca, the third jury's foreman, said it took one day of deliberations for the entire jury to agree. A key to the case, he said, was an expert witness who said the girl's injuries were inconsistent with a slip or trip and instead suggested that she was thrown.
Another key to reaching the verdict, he said, was a jury visit to the cliff where Lauren died. Jurors hiked up to Inspiration Point, where prosecutors said Brown threw Lauren onto the rocks and water below.
"It didn't seem likely that a 4-year-old girl would be up there playing on the ledge," he said.
Before starting their deliberations Tuesday morning, jurors heard rival narratives of what happened atop the cliff on Nov. 8, 2000.
The prosecutor described Brown as a cold-hearted, vindictive man who never wanted the child. But Brown's attorney argued that he loved and cared for his daughter and that the girl was playing near the cliff's edge when she slipped and fell to her death.
In his closing arguments, Laub told jurors that evidence in the case did not prove Brown set out to kill his child, but instead painted him as a lousy father and unlikable person. The prosecution of Brown, who was arrested in 2003, was propelled by an emotional reaction to the death of a young child, he said.
Hum, however, argued that the evidence pointed to first-degree murder, saying that Brown mustered only a halfhearted attempt at rescuing the girl after the fall and was indifferent and uninterested in the hours and days that followed.
In addition to the guilty verdict, jurors found true special circumstance allegations of lying in wait and acting for financial gain.
Brown faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole. His sentencing hearing is scheduled for June 19.
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UPDATES
3:44 p.m.: This post has been updated with details during and after the verdict.
1:14 p.m.: This post has been updated with the verdict.
This post was first published at 12:22 p.m.
