CONVICTED. Samuel Brown, 43, ex-convict; of murder and robbery in the 1981 Brink's armored-truck holdup at a Nanuet, N.Y., mall in which a guard and two police officers were killed; in White Plains, N.Y. Brown was the last of the nine Brink's suspects in custody to be prosecuted.

SENTENCED. George Hansen, 53, colorful, right-wing Republican Congressman from Idaho; to five to 15 months in prison and a $40,000 fine, for filing false financial-disclosure statements to Congress that, among other things, omitted his monetary ties to Texas Billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt; in Washington, B.C.

DIED. Enrico Berlinguer, 62, secretary-general since 1972 of Italy's Communist Party (P.C.I.), the largest and most influential in the Western world, and builder of "Eurocommunism," a Western democratic Marxism; of a stroke; in Padua, Italy.

An intense, humorless Sardinian born to an aristocratic family, he rose through party ranks, was elected to parliament in 1968, and took over effective party leadership from the ailing Luigi Longo in 1969. In pursuit of his ultimate goal--inclusion in the government-- Berlinguer rejected Soviet Communism as a model and approved Italy's membership in NATO. In the 1976 elections, the P.C.I, gained its greatest popularity, with 34.4% of the vote. But Berlinguer was denied the "historic compromise" of a coalition partnership with the long-dominant Christian Democrats, and his party's vote totals gradually declined.

DIED. Nathaniel Owings, 81, boisterous co-founder and senior partner of the architectural leviathan Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, who presided over more than $3 billion of construction during his 40-year career, including such prestigious and innovative design commissions as New York City's Lever House, Chicago's towering John Hancock Building, and San Francisco's Crown Zellerbach Building; of lung cancer; in Jacona, N. Mex.

DIED. Meredith Willson, 82, The Music Man's music man, who wrote book, score and lyrics for the durable 1957 Broadway salute to small-town simplicity and sentiment, and The Unsinkable Molly Brown (1960), also a hit; in Santa Monica, Calif.

DIED. Margaret Farrar, 87, first lady of crosswords, who served as puzzle editor of the New York Times from 1942 to 1969, compiled 134 collections for publication since 1924, and transformed a newspaper space filler into a perennial national pastime, upgrading its style and language and creating all kinds of theme puzzles; of a heart attack; in New York City.