Cameron Brown Guilty Of Throwing Daughter Off Cliff, Is Death Penalty An Option?

A jury declared Cameron Brown guilty of purposefully throwing his daughter off a cliff around 15 years ago. The case had been declared a mistrial in two previous trials since the jury could not figure out if he had done the deed on purpose. Brown claims it was an accident, but now that the verdict is in the question remains if the death penalty is appropriate in this case.

In a related report by the Inquisitr, the major factor in deciding Cameron Brown’s guilty verdict was his child support obligations, which were $1,000 a month back in the year 2000.

“Brown was in the middle of a bitter fallout with the mother of his child, Sarah Key-Marer. It was revealed that he never wanted his daughter, and resented that the girl’s mother didn’t get an abortion. That is why he presumably threw the child from the cliff to her death.”

Defense lawyers claimed the cliffside trail where they went for a walk was treacherous. It is said the little girl was tossing rocks at Inspiration Point when she accidentally fell to her death.

The jurors actually visited the cliff where little Lauren’s murder allegedly took place in order to inspect these claims. Cameron Brown stood guarded while this occurred, and it is said “the defendant stood silently, looked straight ahead and didn’t really look at the jury much. Just stared out to the ocean.”

Prosecutors wanted jurors to get a feel for the condition of the cliff’s hiking trail. Greg Apodaca, the third jury’s foreman, noted that the girl’s injuries were inconsistent with a slip or a fall since her body lacked the scratches which would indicate she slid off accidentally.

“It didn’t seem likely that a 4-year-old girl would be up there playing on the ledge,” Apodaca said, according to the Los Angeles Times.

Defense attorney Tom Mesereau seemed to think it helped the jurors declare Cameron Brown guilty.

“If the defendant did in fact kill his daughter in this fashion, it’s a very horrific crime, and if the district attorney’s office believes this crime actually occurred, I can understand why they would want to persist.”

Based upon these concerns, the jury declared Cameron Brown guilty but the sentencing hearing is not scheduled until June 19, 2015. Cameron has been in jail for nearly 12 years, even though he has not been convicted. He currently faces a mandatory sentence of life without the possibility of parole.

So far, prosecutors have not discussed the possibility of the death penalty. It is highly unlikely to occur since the crime took place in California, and the death penalty has not been enforced since 2006. In 2012, California voters rejected a ballot measure to get rid of capital punishment entirely, but in 2014 a federal judge named Cormac J. Carney ruled that California’s death penalty system is unconstitutional, claiming it was arbitrary and plagued with delay.

Do you think Cameron Brown should receive the death penalty?

[Image via Seattle PI]