Lives On Hold Part 2: The Double Murder that Continues to Tear Families Apart and Tests Our Legal System to the Limit

By MATTHEW MEYER | Reporter

It was Sunday, June 30, 1991, when Brian Berry went to visit his friend James White, who was working a closing shift alone at a Subway sandwich shop in Northridge.

Childhood friends, the two had grown up together nearby.

When they were young, Berry used to earn his allowance by doing chores around the house. White would ride over on his bike and they would complete the tasks together, splitting the spoils when they were done and playing for the rest of the day.

This was something like that—Berry was keeping White company while he finished the day’s work. He may have even pitched in a little, so the two of them could get on to whatever came next.

Berry had recently started working as a welder. He was never a “college guy” his twin sister, Shannon Anderson, later said—he was happier working with his hands.

Both boys were fresh out of high school, enjoying newfound independence.

At the time, James Robinson Jr., a Palisades Charter High School graduate, was a 22-year-old part-time student at Cal State, Northridge.

One year previous, Robinson was fired from the Subway sandwich shop where White and Berry were spending the evening. He and another employee were let go after neither came forward with missing money from their shifts.

Today, Robinson is on death row, convicted of entering the Subway, shooting Berry and White execution style, and taking about $600 from the shop’s register and floor safe.

He was arrested nine days after the crime.

In 1993, a jury found him guilty, based in part on eyewitness accounts, physical evidence matching Robinson to the scene and testimony from his former roommate, Tai Williams, and their mutual friend, Tommy Aldridge.

Robinson insisted that Williams—and potentially Aldridge—planned and executed the robbery themselves, summoning him to the scene as a means of framing him. It’s an insistence that some of those closest to him still believe.

The original jury came to a consensus on Robinson’s guilt, but in the penalty phase, they deadlocked on the issue of imposing the death penalty.

The penalty phase was declared a mistrial, and it was a second jury, in 1994, that ultimately agreed on Robinson’s death.

He’s been behind bars ever since; two decades and some change.

Robinson’s stayed primarily in San Quentin State Prison, north of San Francisco, where most death row inmates in California serve their time between countless legal appeals.

Robinson is not unique in the indefinite delay of his court-appointed fate. Since 1978, California has only moved 13 people all the way through appeals and on to execution.

Robinson’s counsel answered questions from the Post about his time in prison, but expressed apprehension about arranging an interview during the appeals process.

Early correspondence with PaliHi English teacher Mary Redclay revealed that Robinson took to writing in the initial years of his imprisonment—an occasional poem and, later, full-length novels.

Robert Phelps, a co-counsel on his defense team, said that Robinson has turned to painting to fill the time. The attorney has several works from Robinson hanging in his office.

In early letters, Robinson expressed horror at the commonplace violence of prison. He mused about the value of life after a friend died and his surroundings reacted with indifference.

He encouraged one student, a pen pal, to visit her recently imprisoned brother. “Please don’t treat him as if he can’t be humanly touched,” he wrote. “People need family or someone to come visit them in here.”

For the past year, Robinson has been relocated from San Quentin to a jail in LA. From there, he’s shuttled in handcuffs to appeal hearings downtown.

For an afternoon, he sits in a brightly lit courtroom beside attorneys in suits, silently absorbing the proceedings. Then a bailiff escorts him down the hall and away from the courtroom, back behind bars.

In the gallery, people urging the appeals in opposite directions politely file out their own door, back to their own personal trials.

For Robinson’s defenders, the appeals are a glimmer of hope.

For the victims’ families, the appeals are salt in a wound that never properly healed.

In court, the appeals feel abstract against such an emotional backdrop.

Conversation has moved away from the events of June 30, 1991 entirely. The focus of the most recent appeal is on the jury from 1993.

Robinson’s counsel alleges two different forms of misconduct may have compromised that jury.

One of the jurors, they suspect, may have been racially biased against Robinson, who is  African American. Others may have made a “quid pro quo” agreement during the guilt phase, with some jurors agreeing to rule Robinson guilty only in exchange for an agreement not to select the death penalty later.

In court, Deputy District Attorney Brian Kelberg vigorously rejects both claims.

The appeal has once again broadened the scope of Robinson’s case, focusing the questions of today on people at the absolute fringe of a decades-old crime.

Witnesses frequently answer questions by stating simply, “I don’t recall.”

The people closest to the tragedy sit and watch and wait.

Berry’s sister remains steadfast in her belief that the truth will keep Robinson behind bars. She’s there for every hearing, well-versed in the legalese.

But somewhere along this line of endless appeals, she’s learned to separate her own mental health from what happens in the courtroom. Anderson said that when she walks away from each hearing, she allows her focus to return to her own life.

“If you can’t heal yourself separate from whatever happens in court, you’re not going to make it,” she told the Post. “When the case is closed and done is done, if your heart’s still broken and your soul’s still broken—you’re still broken. You have to heal ‘you’ separate from the system.”

At first, she wasn’t able to do that. During the original trials, she stopped seeing friends or going to school, closing herself off to anyone outside her inner circle.

“I always was an outgoing and friendly and bubbly kind of a person, and that got lost for a long time,” Anderson said. But now, she believes, “the core of who I am is back.”

Her father has healed, too, in his own way.

Anderson said he’s deeply involved in the church, and he works with an organization that provides mentorship to families who have suffered tragic loss.

“You get to the other side, and then you help the newbies,” Anderson said of the work.

Each year, Steve also presents the Brian Berry Memorial Scholarship to a high school student from the twins’ alma mater. The small monetary scholarship goes to a student who demonstrates “exceptional potential,” particularly—like Brian did—in a trade or craft.

Both father and daughter have found sources of personal joy in their new world. Both are now married; Anderson has a 12-year-old boy.

A part of her will always be missing, but she allows the present moment to absorb her.

When it’s time for another hearing, she revisits the past.

There were two court dates scheduled for May, and then one or two more in June, depending on the pace of proceedings.

Afterward, Judge William Ryan will write a report on the hearings’ findings and submit it to the state’s Supreme Court.

The Post asked an attorney involved in the trial how long the report would sit in line, waiting to advise the Court on its next action.

In his experience, he answered, the process takes three to four years.