Deadlock Ends Ginger Brown Kidnap Trial

A mistrial was declared Thursday in the Ginger Brown kidnaping trial after jurors told Superior Court Judge David B. Moon Jr. that they were “hopelessly deadlocked” on the remaining charges after five days of deliberations.

By their own count, the jurors generally were dead-split or leaning toward acquittal in a trial that saw Earle and Dorothy Brown, 58, of Santa Cruz, charged with the kidnaping of their 24-year-old daughter, whom they believed had lost her free will through her association with a group known as Great Among the Nations.

The mistrial does not affect several not-guilty verdicts the jury announced Thursday on lesser charges against some of the five co-defendants.

San Diego County Dist. Atty. Edwin Miller said a decision will probably be made today whether to retry the case.

Defense attorneys said the trial was the first in the nation in which parents stood before a jury on charges that they kidnaped an adult child because they feared for her safety. The prosecution’s star witness against the defendants was the couple’s daughter herself, Ginger Brown.

The Coronado-based Great Among the Nations is described by its members as a tight-knit, 17-member fundamental Christian Bible study and evangelism ministry. It is characterized by parents of past and present group members as a cult whose members have been influenced to finance the comfortable life style of its leader, Benjamin Altschul.

Ginger Brown returned to the group after the five-day deprogramming effort in an Escondido home.

Earle Brown said after the mistrial was declared, “We’re still concerned about Ginger, but she’s fully forgiven. We have nothing but open arms and love for her.”

For her part, Ginger Brown said: “If they have not come to a decision, they should try to come to a decision. If the state of California wants me to come back as a witness, I will.”

Earle Brown’s attorney, Saul Wright, said:

“I’m going to ask the district attorney to please--underline please--consider the facts: that this jury would not convict Mr. and Mrs. Brown. Let them lick their wounds and go home without further prosecution. They (prosecutors) had their shot at the Browns. Let’s quit. We’ve had enough.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Gary Rempel, who prosecuted the case, said he was “satisfied with the fact this jury deliberated as best it could in dealing with the verdicts. They wrestled with their consciences as instructed by the judge. We certainly thank them for their efforts.”

Presiding juror Paula DeMong told Moon that, on the most serious of the three charges facing the four defendants--kidnaping, the nearest jurors came toward a conviction was a split 6 to 6 vote on Clifford Daniels, 35. Daniels is the Los Angeles deprogrammer hired by Earle and Dorothy Brown to persuade their daughter to disavow her allegiance to the group and Altschul.

On that same kidnaping charge, the jury was split 5 to 7 in favor of acquitting Earle Brown, 3 to 9 in favor of acquiting Dorothy Brown and 2 to 10 in favor of acquitting Holly Brown, 25, one of Ginger Brown’s three sisters.

On the charge of using the threat of violence to hold Ginger Brown in false imprisonment, the jurors were split 4 to 8 for acquittal of Daniels and 3 to 9 for acquittal of Earle Brown.

On the lesser charge of false imprisonment without threat of violence, the jurors had voted 7 to 5 to convict Daniels and deadlocked 6 to 6 to convict Earle Brown and Hank Erler, in whose mother’s Escondido home the unsuccessful, five-day deprogramming attempt occurred in May, 1988. On that same charge, the jurors, by an 8-4 vote were leaning to acquit Dorothy and Holly Brown.

On the last outstanding charge--battery--the jury was split 6 to 6 to convict Daniels and leaning 8 to 4 to acquit Earle Brown, jurors told Moon.

At one point Thursday afternoon, the judge asked jurors if they would favor a so-called special verdict, in which the jurors would be asked to unanimously affirm whether the various technical elements of each crime were present but stop short of signing a guilty verdict. That final pronouncement would be made by the judge himself, based on the jury’s various findings that the specific criminal elements were present that would constitute the crimes.

After a short recess, the jurors--some of whom seemed confused by the rare legal protocol of a special verdict--returned and declined the offer.

Despite rejecting several defense motions during the day for a mistrial based on the apparent deadlock, Moon late in the afternoon called the jurors into his courtroom and asked each one if he felt the panel was hopelessly deadlocked. Each of the eight men and four women said yes.

With that, he swiftly declared a mistrial and, as soon as the jurors left the courtroom, with instructions to return today, the defendants reacted with hugs, smiles and tears.

“Victory. Sweet victory,” said Daniels as he walked out of the courtroom.

Earle Brown walked before television cameras and blurted out a reference to Altschul: “He doesn’t deserve to live in a civilized society. He’s scum. He is scum.”

Despite the hung jury on the kidnaping, false imprisonment and battery charges, all five co-defendants still face charges of conspiracy to kidnap and conspiracy to false imprisonment, and the two Brown women faces charges of being accessories.

Moon previously ordered those charges to be tried separately from the first set because of a different set of evidentiary rules, and had intended for the same jury to hear additional evidence in what would amount to a second trial.

Unresolved are whether the prosecution will still pursue those charges and, if so, whether Moon hopes to hold on to the same jury, whose members clearly are growing frustrated by the unexpected length of the protracted case.

Because of the prospect that their job is not yet completed, the judge told the jurors they were still admonished not to discuss the case with the public.

Defense attorneys held Thursday’s mistrial as a victory, especially given the context of their defense case, in which they were prohibited by a series of pretrial rulings by Moon from arguing that the Browns and the other defendants operated out of “necessity” and “good motive” in trying to “rescue” Ginger Brown from the group.

Moon ruled that the defense did not offer proof that Ginger Brown was in personal jeopardy and, thus, the good-motive defense could not be applied. Saying their defense had been gutted, the attorneys then suggested a new defense theme: that Ginger Brown had herself baited her parents and the others to kidnap her so she could later sue them for monetary damages to help bankroll her group. Ginger Brown did file a $2.5-million lawsuit against the five last year. The suit remains unresolved.

Several defense attorneys said they were simply grasping at straws because they had no other basis to defend the Browns.

Whether jurors believed that scenario, or simply were persuaded by sympathy for the parents, remained unclear Thursday.

Regardless, prosecutors acknowledged that sympathy was on the side of the elder Browns, who during the trial were visibly distressed as they listened to their youngest of four daughters testify against them and who heard themselves characterized as “urban guerrillas “ by prosecutor Rempel.

Dist. Atty. Miller stood by his office’s decision to prosecute the couple and the three others. “It’s not as if this is the first time we’ve tried these (deprogramming) cases, and we can’t be inconsistent in the manner in which we review and prosecute cases of this nature,” Miller said.

“We can’t decide the sympathy factor in one case is so great that we should turn our back on what is otherwise a viable prosecution,” Miller said. “I don’t believe people should be pushed around. The fact that you disagree with someone’s religious persuasion is not sufficient reason for you, for any person, to forcibly kidnap a person or take control of them against their will.”

Miller said he was frustrated that, despite rulings by Moon intended to limit the scope of testimony--and to keep issues of cults and religious freedom out of the case--some witnesses still chose words and phrases that might have tainted the jury.

On Thursday, Erler, 23, was acquitted by the jury on charges of kidnaping, false imprisonment through violence and battery, while both Holly and Dorothy Brown were acquitted on Thursday of false imprisonment through violence and battery.

Daniels said he has no plans to try to take Ginger Brown again.

“She should still somehow be rescued,” Daniels said, “but I’m not going after her a second time.”

Of the hung jury, he said: “I hope this sends a message, that the American public recognizes that family has the right to rescue their children from unscrupulous and deviant people who would chose to exploit them for profit and for ego and power. There’s no lower form of humanity than someone who comes in the name of God and destroys another human being’s life, and that’s what this jury saw. This is a tremendous victory. We didn’t have a defense . . . and still the jury sensed by instinct that the law as it’s written today was not written for the purposes that these parents were being charged under.”

Times staff writer Alan Abrahamson contributed to this story.