Son Will Face Trial In Father's '06 Killing

The killing of a former top government marine biologist in Fairfax County in 2006 is headed to trial next month after a Fairfax judge declined yesterday to dismiss a murder charge against his son for violating his right to a speedy trial.

Dail W. Brown, 64, had recently retired as head of a division of the National Marine Fisheries Services when he disappeared in September 2006. While searching his Vienna home, detectives opened the trunk of Brown's Oldsmobile Cutlass Ciera and found his dismembered body in numerous plastic bags. He had been shot twice in the face, Fairfax prosecutors said.

Brown's son, Dail W. Brown Jr., now 38, also disappeared. He was found the next day in Columbus, Ohio, and charged with murder in his father's killing.

But not long after a preliminary hearing in February 2007, the case bogged down. Brown's attorney, James Hundley, filed notice that he would be raising insanity at the time of the slaying as a defense. Then Brown became involved in an altercation in the Fairfax jail that led to more charges, and the lawyers in that case questioned whether Brown was competent to stand trial.

In the murder case, Fairfax Circuit Court Judge Stanley P. Klein ruled in February 2008 that Brown was not competent to face the murder charges and ordered him to be treated and "restored to competency" at Central State Hospital in Petersburg. The hospital treated Brown, and in October notified prosecutors and the defense that Brown was competent, "well able to consult and collaborate with an attorney at this time."

But the hospital sent its report to the wrong judge. Hundley received the report and waited for a hearing to set a trial date. Assistant Commonwealth's Attorney William Rhyne received the report and did nothing, saying he didn't think the report found Brown competent.

So Brown spent six additional months in the hospital. In April, the hospital's chief forensic coordinator sent a letter to the judge asking why Brown had not been returned to Fairfax for trial. It was the first Klein knew that Brown had been restored to competency. He called the lawyers in. Hundley then said he would seek to have the case dismissed.

Virginia requires a defendant to go to trial within five months of his preliminary hearing, although the clock stops for various reasons, including continuances by the defense, escapes and medical treatment. But Hundley argued that the five-month clock resumed once Brown was found competent in October and that Brown should be released.

Klein noted that state law requires him to hold a hearing and make a competency finding himself, after receiving a report from mental experts, and that he didn't do so until last month. "I just can't imagine why nothing was done in the office of the commonwealth's attorney for a period of six months," the judge said, and he ordered Brown reevaluated before trial July 13.