Killer’s pleas for leniency don’t sway Fresno judge. Here’s what he was sentenced to
In a plea for leniency, convicted killer Brian Smith on Tuesday tried to convince Judge Alvin Harrell that the fatal shooting of his one-time friend Steven Michael Robinson was an accident.
Robinson, 21, died of a single gun shot wound to the head on June 7, 2017 after a confrontation with a then 28-year-old Smith.
Smith was charged in the killing and convicted on Sept. 23 of second degree murder.
Prosecutor Ryan Wells called the murder vicious and brutal, urging the judge for a lengthy prison term during Tuesday’s sentencing hearing.
Smith’s attorney Roberto Dulce, pleaded for a lighter punishment at the hearing, saying his client has no criminal history.
At one point, Smith told the judge: “It was an accident and I take full responsibility.”
Harrell wasn’t swayed. He said the crime was no accident and found it “very cruel” and “inexplicable” how “an individual can take a firearm and place it to his purported friend’s forehead and pull the trigger.”
Harrell sentenced Smith to 40 years to life in prison.
Detectives testified Smith shot Robinson in the head at close range. He loaded his body in the backseat of his car and drove to a vineyard just south of Parlier, where he dumped the body.
Defendant denied killing
Once Smith was identified as a suspect, he admitted to having a fistfight with Robinson that night but denied killing him.
A county worker, inspecting insects traps, found Robinson’s body in the early afternoon of June 8, 2017. His body had been dragged into the vineyard.
Detectives got their first break in the case on June 9, 2017, when a technical school instructor told them that one of her students from Parlier knew something about the killing.
Detectives interviewed the student, who said she was upset with Smith because he had come to her home on Fresno Street in Parlier unannounced and intoxicated on the night of June 7, 2017, sheriff’s detective Jose Mora testified in 2018.
The woman’s boyfriend tried to calm Smith, but he appeared agitated, Mora testified.
Sometime during the night, Smith went to where Robinson was staying in Parlier and convinced him to come over to the Fresno Street location to hang out, Mora said.
The woman told detectives Smith and Robinson were outside her Fresno Street home.
According to Mora, the woman and her boyfriend were inside their home when they heard a gunshot. When they went outside, Smith and Robinson were gone, he said.
This story was originally published October 29, 2019 at 4:13 PM.
