CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

By Harriet Ryan

June 18, 2009 12 AM PT

The state Supreme Court refused Wednesday to halt Chris Brown’s preliminary hearing on charges of assaulting and threatening the pop star Rihanna.

Brown requested that the June 22 proceeding, which could see Rihanna take the stand against her former beau, be postponed.

Mark Geragos, Brown’s lawyer, asked for a delay to allow justices to determine whether Brown was entitled to review police records that could contain information about the leak of a photo showing Rihanna’s bloodied face.

Superior Court Judge Patricia Schnegg said the defense was not entitled to the records until after the hearing.

Brown, 20, faces nearly five years in prison if convicted. Police allege that he beat, choked, bit and threatened Rihanna, whose real name is Robyn Rihanna Fenty, in February.

-- Harriet Ryan

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Politics California

Harriet Ryan

Harriet Ryan is an investigative reporter for the Los Angeles Times. Since joining the paper in 2008, she has written about high-profile people, including Phil Spector, Michael Jackson and Tom Girardi, and institutions, including USC, the State Bar of California, the Catholic Church, the Kabbalah Centre and Purdue Pharma, the manufacturer of OxyContin. Ryan won the Pulitzer Prize for Investigative Reporting with colleagues Matt Hamilton and Paul Pringle in 2019. She and Hamilton won the Collier Prize for State Government Accountability in 2023. She previously worked at Court TV and the Asbury Park Press. She is a graduate of Columbia University.

CALIFORNIA BRIEFING / LOS ANGELES

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