Pasadena Man Convicted of Lewd Acts With a Girl

After deliberating only three hours, a Superior Court jury Tuesday convicted a Pasadena man of four counts of forcible lewd acts upon a child and two counts of child abuse.

The jury found Rodney Dion Brown guilty of molesting a 6-year-old girl in a house where they both were residing. Brown had been out on parole for only eight weeks at the time of the incident.

There were no other adults in the house at the time because the girl’s mother was visiting her fiance, Brown’s younger brother, at state prison in Chino.

Brown’s mother and sister, who also lived in the house, had left to get breakfast. The girl and her young female cousin had been left in the care of a 14-year-old male cousin, witnesses said.

Brown, convicted of raping a woman in 1984, also served state prison time for second-degree robbery. He had been returned to prison in 2001 for eight months for a parole violation before his release March 10.

Sheldon Levitin, Brown’s court-appointed attorney, said his client was accepting of the verdict. On Thursday, Brown had stated that he no longer wanted to attend court proceedings. “He decided the day he left that he was going to get convicted,” Levitin said.

Juror Clarli Wilson, 73, said there was not much discussion among jurors before arriving at the guilty verdicts. “The prosecution had so much evidence. It was pretty damaging.”

Wilson said she and other jurors were particularly touched by testimony of the young victim, who cried in response to some questions posed by Deputy Dist. Atty. Michael Carter. When Carter asked, “Did Rodney touch you?” the girl closed her eyes and did not speak.

A police officer and a nurse who spoke with the girl May 4, the day of the incident, testified that she said it was Brown.