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PDF: Riverside Co. DA's response to petition for executive clemency for Albert Greenwood Brown

A man facing execution Sept. 29 for the 1980 kidnapping, rape and murder of a Riverside high school girl has shown no remorse and should be put to death, county prosecutors said Wednesday.

The packet sent to Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger opposes clemency for Albert Greenwood Brown.

It includes letters from family members of Susan Jordan, the 15-year-old Arlington High School student whose body Brown left in an orange grove after the deadly Oct. 28, 1980, assault.

Brown called and taunted his victim's mother afterward.

In a letter attached to the document and signed "Angelina Jordan and family," Susan's mother, now 70, addressed Brown directly:

"I have not forgotten that cruel, chilling phone call in which you so proudly made the statement, 'You will never see your daughter alive again.' It was then that God revealed to me that I would indeed see my daughter again, and I eagerly await that day.

"Albert Brown, you will stand before God to give an account for this barbaric act. You have been a plague on society, and on all that is decent ....Your day of accountability is now upon you. The Jordan family will be watching," she wrote.

Riverside County District Attorney Rod Pacheco said nothing should stand between Brown and his execution.

"Quite frankly, in this case there is a certainty of guilt and a certainty of punishment. Not once in any proceeding, or at any moment in the past 30 years, has the inmate expressed any thing resembling human remorse," Pacheco wrote.

Brown, 56, , formerly of Riverside, was convicted and sentenced in 1982. He is on San Quentin's death row.

Court challenges by other inmates over the state's new protocol to administer death by lethal injection in California may delay Brown's execution date.

Brown's attorney, Jan B. Norman, of Los Angeles, did not return a phone call Wednesday seeking comment. Her client has exhausted all legal appeals, and only a governor's grant of clemency can vacate his death sentence.

In her petition filed last week, she asked Schwarzenegger to delay the execution and let California's next governor decide on clemency for her client in 2011.

Norman said she believes Schwarzenegger has been pushing for executions to resume. "Any current clemency process appears to be a 'pro forma charade,' " she wrote.

A LONG WAIT

One member of Susan Jordan's family said Wednesday they have been waiting long enough.

"Words cannot express the outrage that we, the Jordans, feel toward Albert Brown," e-mailed Karen Jordan Brown, the sister of Susan. "We wholeheartedly agree with the DA's petition to proceed with the execution. We've been waiting for this day for 30 years, and it is truly shameful that his death sentence has been dragged out this long."

Other family members include Susan's brothers Brian and James, and Susan's mother, Angelina. Susan's father, also named James Jordan, died in 1996, Karen Jordan Brown said.

Susan Jordan was grabbed as she walked along Victoria Avenue in Riverside on her way to morning classes at Arlington High School, prosecutors said.

The prosecution's address to Schwarzenegger recounts her abduction and assault by Brown after he dragged her into an orange grove.

In addition, the document signed by Pacheco and Chief Assistant District Attorney Bill Mitchell also cites the 1977 rape of a 14-year-old Riverside girl for which Brown had been convicted and paroled just four months before the attack on Jordan.

Brown's execution date was ordered by a Riverside County judge on Aug. 30, the day a new protocol for execution by lethal injection took effect in California.

The next day, a Marin County judge ruled in two different inmates' cases that a 2007 injunction against lethal injection would continue "unless and until" the new procedures are approved by the court.

The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has appealed that injunction and is awaiting a ruling from an appellate court, spokeswoman Terry Thornton said Wednesday.

The department will proceed operationally as though the Brown execution will take place Sept. 29, she said. The last execution in California was in 2006.

Reach Richard K. De Atley at 951-368-9573 or rdeatley@PE.com