Just Another ‘Santa Ana Case,’ Unless You’re the Widow

It started on a sidewalk on a summer night in 1989. It ended Friday in a courtroom. The tally: one man dead, another spending the prime of his life in prison, and a widow with six children devastated.

It’s a good thing more people don’t attend these murder trials and sentencings, because it would shock them to find out what the going price for a life can be these days.

In this case, it was a bottle of beer in the middle of a sidewalk.

On June 15, 1989, Eugene Robinson and a friend were walking back from a liquor store to Robinson’s apartment in Santa Ana. As they were walking down Pine Street about 10:30 at night, they passed two men leaning against a Chrysler. In the middle of the sidewalk in front of the men was a bottle with some beer in it.

Robinson made a motion to steer his friend, Eugene Maciel, away from the bottle so as not to knock it over. According to Maciel, Robinson looked at the two men and said, “Sorry.” The men leaning against the car started talking to Robinson and Maciel.

According to court records, one of the men said to Maciel: “Why are you hanging around a nigger?” Robinson was black, Maciel is Latino. Both men leaning against the car are Latino.

Maciel said he and Robinson kept walking, not wanting trouble. The two men followed, chiding them, and Maciel and Robinson wound up walking virtually backward, still trying to leave but keeping their eyes on the other two men.

The words turned into a minor fight. One of the men grabbed Maciel’s shirt with one hand and ripped a gold chain off his neck with the other. Maciel and Robinson then tried to run off, but a single shot from a 9-millimeter handgun struck Robinson in the back of the head, killing him. He was 34 years old.

The whole incident lasted a few minutes at most. A couple of months later, Rey Adam Esquerra, a small-time criminal with previous burglary and auto-theft raps, was identified and charged with being the person who shot Robinson.

On Friday, Judge Robert Fitzgerald sentenced Esquerra to 35 years to life in state prison for second-degree murder and for robbing Maciel of his gold chain. The sentence was increased with a firearms charge and parole violations. Esquerra is 27 years old.

It was all over in about 30 minutes.

Esquerra, in a yellow Orange County Jail jumpsuit, cried softly as Robinson’s widow, Nieves, sobbingly described how losing her husband of 18 years has ruined her life. She is raising six children, the youngest of whom hadn’t been born when Robinson was killed.

“He wasn’t a racist,” she wailed at Esquerra, referring to her dead husband. “In God’s eyes, we’re all the same; it doesn’t matter what we are.”

She brought four of her children with her to the sentencing, including her 15-year-old daughter, who she said has “become a mother overnight” to help her raise the other children.

Esquerra spoke briefly and said he wasn’t the man who shot her husband.

“God knows the truth and justice will be done,” Nieves Robinson interrupted.

James Patrick Marion, the deputy district attorney who prosecuted the case, asked for the maximum sentence and told the judge that “society, basically, should just put him (Esquerra) away.”

Defense attorney Robert E. Scott said afterward: “You know what the D.A.’s office calls these cases? They call them Santa Ana cases. They run the gamut. I guess the prime ingredient is that the homicides are usually totally senseless, but in a sense this is typical of what’s coming out of Santa Ana these days and, I guess, some other cities.”

Marion and Scott agree that as ridiculous as it sounds, Robinson got killed because he was walking down the wrong street. Another insane murder over turf, the kind that is going to continue to darken Santa Ana’s reputation until someone can stop it.

“They’re tragic,” Scott agreed, referring to turf murders. “It goes beyond the word tragic. I don’t know how to describe something like this.”

Five minutes in the street. One shot in the night. Thirty minutes in a courtroom 21 months later.

That’s the life cycle of another senseless murder. If you’re keeping score, this one was filed as Criminal Case 77295. Marion said Esquerra will serve about 20 years, at least, before getting a shot at parole.

I wish I had some great point to make with all this, but I don’t.

I’m not even sure whether I’m trying to surprise you or horrify you. There’s a chance, I suppose, that it won’t have any effect on you at all.

I guess there’s only one lesson to be learned, and Eugene Robinson already learned it the night he was just walking down the street minding his own business.