3rd Jury Seated in Trial of Man Accused of Pushing Child off Rancho Palos Verdes Cliff

A jury was sworn in today for the third trial of a man charged with killing his 4-year-old daughter, who plunged to her death from a 120-foot cliff in Rancho Palos Verdes nearly 15 years ago.

The Los Angeles Superior Court jury was directed to return to court Wednesday morning for opening statements in the trial of Cameron John Brown.

The 53-year-old defendant is charged with murder in the Nov. 8, 2000, death of his daughter, Lauren Sarene Key, off the isolated tip of Inspiration Point.

Brown could face a potential life prison sentence without the possibility of parole if convicted of first-degree murder, and if jurors find true the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder while lying in wait.

The first jury to hear the case deadlocked in August 2006 at the Torrance courthouse, with eight panelists favoring a second-degree murder conviction and two each lobbying for first-degree murder and involuntary manslaughter.

The case was subsequently moved to the downtown Los Angeles criminal courthouse, where jurors deadlocked in Brown’s second trial in October 2009. Six jurors voted in favor of convicting Brown of second-degree murder, while the other six favored involuntary manslaughter.

During Brown’s second trial, Deputy District Attorney Craig Hum argued that the former airport baggage handler threw a daughter he never wanted off the cliff to avoid paying $1,000 a month in child support -- which he had recently been order to begin paying -- and to retaliate against the girl’s mother, who became pregnant soon after they began dating and refused to give up the child.

“There was no relationship (between Brown and his daughter), and that’s how the defendant could do this,” the prosecutor told jurors in the second trial.

The defense has long asserted that the girl slipped and fell to her death.

The attorney who represented Brown in his second trial told that jury his client was a “warm, loving father” who “loved her very much.”

Brown has been jailed without bail since his Nov. 16, 2003, arrest.

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