Driver Gets Life Sentence for Killing Children On Playground

In a surprise end to an emotionally charged trial, jurors decided Wednesday that a man who deliberately rammed his Cadillac into a Costa Mesa playground should be spared the death penalty for killing two toddlers and instead spend the rest of his life in prison.

The decision came just a week after jurors concluded that Steven Allen Abrams was sane at the time of the killings, despite evidence the defendant was mentally disturbed.

The panel declined to comment on the deliberations, but prosecutors said the jury probably was influenced by testimony portraying Abrams as battling voices that urged him to kill.

Jurors “must have felt that it had some weight in the taking of his life,” said Senior Deputy Dist. Atty. Debora Lloyd. “At least we can tell the families [of the victims] that they won’t be bumping into him on the streets in two years.”

The verdict divided relatives of the victims: Sierra Soto, 4, and Brandon Wiener, 3. Isabella Wiener, Brandon’s grandmother, said she thought Abrams received a fair sentence.

“I believe his parents will be mourning for him as well,” Wiener said. “You have to forgive him, but you can’t forget.”

Eric Soto said he “was hoping for what I thought was justice: capital punishment. [But] I can’t say I’m disappointed. Disappointment would be seeing him walk out of here, able to do this to somebody else.”

For almost a month, Abrams sat slumped silently in his chair as his attorneys tried to convince jurors he was mentally ill when he killed the children in August 1999.

Prosecutors never disputed Abrams’ psychiatric problems but argued that many of his delusions were more the product of methamphetamine abuse than psychosis.

Before setting a final sentencing hearing for Dec. 15, Judge John J. Ryan said the case was “as difficult a trial as jurors have to sit on.”