Santa Clarita Man Gets 4 Years for Bilking Widow

Despite pleas for leniency from his attorney and dozens of supporters, Santa Clarita community activist Edwin Seth Brown was sentenced Friday to four years in state prison for bilking an 86-year-old Saugus widow out of more than $250,000.

Brown, 45, Castaic’s 1994 Man of the Year and a popular public figure in the Santa Clarita Valley, could have been given up to six years in prison after being convicted of elder abuse in March for taking the money from Olive Ruby between May 1992 and April 1996.

He said she had given him the money freely, as a gift so he could devote himself to community work. She said the same thing before she died in December. The prosecution contended Brown had illegally manipulated a woman who was mentally impaired after a stroke and incapable of making financial decisions.

Some supporters contend Brown was judged unfairly by a mostly white jury because he is black and gay. Brown broke down at one point in Friday’s hearing as a friend spoke of his good deeds in the community, but he showed no emotion moments later when Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen announced his sentence in Division E of the San Fernando courthouse.

Many of Brown’s supporters, however, who clung to hopes their friend would be given probation, left the packed courtroom in tears.

Because of several outbursts by spectators during the trial, at least five sheriff’s deputies stood guard in the courtroom during Friday’s hearing. There were no major disruptions but one woman was ejected by deputies after a verbal outburst.

“What has happened to Mr. Brown is a travesty,” said Allan Cameron, founder of the Santa Clarita Organization for Planning the Environment, who has worked with Brown on various civic projects.

“I knew Olive and everyone knew that she was giving money to Edwin. There was no subterfuge, there was no crime. She wanted him to be liberated to do what he does better than everyone else, work for the benefit of the community,” Cameron said.

Prosecutors, however, said Brown took the money from Ruby under the guise of using it for charitable causes, such as Val Verde’s Samuel Dixon Family Health Care Center, where he served as director.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Ardith Javan said while Brown had once led efforts to save the low-cost health center from financial ruin, he also used Ruby’s money not to help others but instead to finance a lavish lifestyle that included a trip to Europe, expensive furniture and a Picasso painting.

“As time went on, he saw that he could have a real say in her finances,” Javan said. “His lifestyle wasn’t what he wanted it to be.”

In court Friday, Javan read excerpts from a letter signed by several of Ruby’s relatives praising the jury decision and asking Coen to impose jail time to send Brown a message “that he is not the center of the universe.”

But Brown’s supporters say the jury, which was made up of 10 whites and two Asians, ignored evidence that exonerated him because they found it distasteful that he was living off Ruby’s generosity.

Although Ruby died before she could testify in the trial, she did conduct a videotaped interview with sheriff’s detectives in which she said she gave Brown the money as a gift. She also told several friends that she was distressed by Brown’s prosecution.

“Not one check that Olive ever wrote was intended for Samuel Dixon Health Center,” said Lewis Berti, Brown’s roommate and close friend. “The people in this community simply did not like the fact that a black man got granny’s money.”

Javan strongly denied that Brown’s race or sexual orientation had an impact on the jury, noting that many of his defenders are white.

Prior to the sentencing, Judge Coen rejected a request by Brown’s attorney, Robert Schwartz, for a mistrial on grounds the verdict was unsupported by the evidence.

Coen sentenced Brown to two years in prison for elder abuse and two years for “excessive taking,” because the theft was of more than $100,000. He rejected the prosecution’s request for restitution, but Brown could still face a civil suit by the Ruby estate seeking the return of the money.

Coen said he did not impose the maximum six-year sentence because of Brown’s lack of a criminal record and his community involvement.

The Ruby case, however, was not Brown’s first brush with the law. Earlier this year he pleaded guilty to falsifying court documents after crediting two friends--sent to him to perform community service after unrelated convictions--with more hours of service than they had actually completed.

“I’m very bitterly disappointed. In 22 years of criminal defense work, I have never been so outraged by the verdict of a jury,” Schwartz said. “It was like they weren’t listening to the same trial.”

Schwartz said an appeal was unlikely. “Today, really, was the end of the line for Mr. Brown,” he said.

“The really sad thing about this,” Schwartz said, “is that if Olive were here today she would have been Edwin’s biggest advocate in that courtroom.”