Local News in Brief : Santa Ana : Judge Sets Date for Brown Murder Trial

The murder trial of Anaheim Hills computer entrepreneur David A. Brown, accused of masterminding his wife’s shooting death and letting his daughter take the blame for the crime, will begin March 29, a judge decided Thursday.

Superior Court Judge Myron S. Brown set the trial date at Brown’s arraignment in Orange County Superior Court in Santa Ana, after the 36-year-old defendant pleaded innocent to the charges of murder and conspiracy.

Brown’s daughter, Cinnamon Brown, has spent the last 3 years in a California Youth Authority facility in Camarillo for the shooting death of her stepmother, Linda Brown. She now claims her father directed her to commit the 1985 crime.

Expected to join Cinnamon Brown as a key witness against her father is the murder victim’s sister, Patricia Bailey, 20. Bailey, who married Brown about 16 months after her sister’s death and also is charged with her murder, has agreed to cooperate with prosecutors in the case.

In tape-recorded conversations with his daughter and with police, Brown--who collected $835,000 from his wife’s life insurance--acknowledged that he knew about and took some role in a plot to kill his wife. But he has denied orchestrating it, saying he tried to talk his daughter of out of the plan.