Local News in Brief : Westminster : Judge Turns Down Bid to Halt Pretrial Hearing

David A. Brown’s defense attorney Wednesday sought unsuccessfully to halt Brown’s preliminary hearing on murder charges, claiming that he “felt intimidated” by accusations from the prosecutor.

But Westminster Municipal Judge Floyd H. Schenk abruptly rejected a request for a delay from defense attorney Joel Baruch, ruling that Brown’s preliminary hearing should continue as planned.

Baruch, already embroiled in a feud with Deputy Dist. Atty. Jeoffrey Robinson, complained to the court that Robinson had unjustly accused him to his face of trying to have one of Robinson’s witnesses killed. The witness is Patricia Bailey, sister of the woman both she and Brown are accused of killing.

Brown and Bailey allegedly conspired to kill Brown’s wife, Linda Brown, to collect $835,000 in insurance money. Prosecutors say the pair set up Brown’s 14-year-old daughter, Cinnamon Brown, to take the blame for the crime and that Bailey and Brown later were secretly married.

It was disclosed in court Thursday that Brown and Bailey had a baby girl in September, 1987. Baruch said the daughter’s jealousy and resentment over the baby prompted her to change her original story about the murder.

Cinnamon Brown, now 18, admits killing her stepmother in their Garden Grove home on March 19, 1985. But in testimony this week, she said she did so only under orders from her father. She has served 3 1/2 years of a 27-year to life sentence for the murder.

Baruch, in seeking a delay in the hearing to prepare a motion for Robinson’s dismissal from the case, suggested that the prosecutor is conducting a personal vendetta against him.