DRUG DEALER IN VALLEJO GETS 110 TO LIFE

A Vallejo drug dealer who allegedly tried to dynamite his way out of a
three-strikes drug case was sentenced yesterday to 110 years to life in
prison.

Slumped in a chair next to his attorney, Kevin Lee Robinson closed his eyes
as Solano County Superior Court Judge R. Michael Smith announced the prison
term in a crowded Fairfield courtroom.

Known as ``Big Kev,'' Robinson, 30, was a major Northern California
narcotics supplier who also had a legitimate career as a rap producer. A
jury convicted him in September of 10 weapons and drug charges stemming
from two raids in 1995 and 1996 on several residences that Robinson owned
in Vallejo.

He is also accused of plotting two dynamite bombings that damaged the
Vallejo courthouse and a Wells Fargo Bank branch in January 1997. Police
believe that Robinson and five other men also were trying to destroy
evidence in a police locker at a local library, where children discovered
30 sticks of dynamite in a backpack.

Considerably thinner than the 300 pounds he weighed when arrested last
year, Robinson said nothing during yesterday's brief hearing. His brother
and other family members who attended the sentencing declined to speak with
reporters.

``It's no big surprise,'' Robinson's attorney, Daniel J. Russo, said
outside the courtroom, referring to three-strikes sentencing guidelines
mandating 25-year-to- life sentences for a third or subsequent felony
convictions.

Solano County probation officials recommended that Robinson serve 61 years
in prison. County prosecutors were seeking the maximum of 265 years.
Smith's sentence came down in the middle, with several of Robinson's prison
terms to be served concurrently rather than consecutively.

``We were asking for the maximum, but it is a fair and judicious judgment
in the view of the people,'' Solano County Deputy District Attorney Don du
Bain said.

Before issuing the sentence, Smith denied a defense motion for a new trial.
Russo had argued that prosecutors offered a plea bargain last year to
Robinson's girlfriend -- caught with him in one of the police raids -- that
allegedly caused her to refuse to testify for the defense in return for a
lenient county jail sentence.

``I still believe that deal was done to keep her off the (witness) stand,''
Russo said.

Robinson will remain at the Solano County Jail pending the outcome of the
bombing and conspiracy charges filed against him. His case is scheduled to
go to a preliminary hearing on March 20.

His five alleged co-conspirators have already been indicted by a county
grand jury. Trial dates will be set in April.