CA - Robert Limon, 38, murdered, Tehachapi, 17 Aug 2014

I first learned about this case from Dateline. Once I saw the intro, I stopped watching, came here, and then went to find the trial on YouTube. I am surprised this case did not draw more attention (as others have mentioned). Its one of the most interesting trials I have ever watched.

I definitely believe that Sabrina was the one who decided to murder Rob. Jonathan is clearly very intelligent. Not necessarily street smart, but I'm guessing he would score pretty high on an IQ test. He really flushed his life down the toilet. He had everything going for him- high paying job, sounds like he was on track to go really far professionally, good looks, tall, young, and healthy. And despite all this, he let his emotions take him completely off track and now he will be a felon his in 50's when he gets out. What a waste of a life.

They were both just so stupid.

I agree with everything you said. I've been on Websleuths a longtime and I found this a very interesting case.
 
oh she wanted to go into the witness box... of course, once she was in it, she wanted out in the worst way, but she was/is a woman so willful, so brainlessly willful and witless that she would have rejected all practice sessions , all advice on how to present oneself, all directions from her attorney...

no way is it at all credible that she went up on the stand against her own instincts.. she wanted the world to see how truly irresistible she is, how magnetic and interesting she is, how a person of her 'stature' could not possibly do this dreadful thing..

that strange mantra, ' when Rob was 'lost'.. that was a dead giveaway that she had rehearsed and rehearsed her own idea of what a 1st class testimony should be. She was so in love with herself that it never crossed her mind that she looked and sounded like the very definition of air-head.

Her attorney should be paid double out of public funds . In compensation for outrageous and unusual punishment.
 
I agree it was a big mistake putting her on the stand - but if he hadn't, what defence was there left? They brought her kids in to tug on the jury's heartstrings, but there's little they could bring in the way of actual 'evidence' to support her innocence. They put her sister up there - who like Sabrina did herself no favours and was not a particularly credible witness, an ex boyfriend who was involved in the 'open marriage' and was currently 'seeing' Sabrina, and then they reeled out a female who Jonathan Hearn was in touch with via text. That was it! Not one of them was able to put even a tiny dent into the prosecution case. If Sabrina hadn't taken the stand - what else was there? To be fair to Richard Terry, he didn't have a whole lot to work with.

I'd be very surprised if Mr Terry hadn't got Madame Lash to sign a form about her going on the witness stand against all advice. Lawyers don't get to be criminal defence lawyers without dealing with some genuine low IQ's , who also have defiance disorders, and an incapacity to apprehend consequences, allied with her inability to comprehend her own mother tongue ( English ) and Sabrina has all those failings , along with a whole lot more , in spades.

It 's rational to believe that Mr Terry would have covered his backside, surely, in this easily foreseeable outcome. After all, as soon as her affair ended in the murder of her husband, as she planned and expected, she turned on the shootist..... the pattern was well defined.
 
Even in California , surely this theory of Sabrina's attorney won't fly.. .. .. things cannot be that convoluted.

The thing is, she could indeed have a new trial , she could have 7 new trials, but the evidence remains, all the phone taps, his testimony, etc. but what new evidence could she bring to refute that which the Californian prosecutor , the sweet looking Mr Smith, already has placed as evidence?

One of the baffling things her attorney did, , baffling to me, probably ordinary to Californians, was, .. remember when he put up almost a years worth of pictures of Rob and Sabrina, and the kids, having a high old time, on a boat, at picnics, the theatre, at home , at parties, etc.. Rob and Sabrina grinning away, always hugging.. then he , HER attorney sinks the boot in and says 'all this time, at the same time, you were in a sexual relationship with Hearn, were you not?'...

I about died of embarrassment for her, it could not have gone well with the jury.... but surely a new trial couldn't be processed on that basis ?

And surely , she could have simply refused to take the stand at any time? no one can be forced to be their own witness, as far as I know, ...
 
I knew she'd try ineffective counsel!


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Today's the Day!!!

I'm in the UK (8 hours ahead of Bakersfield, CA time wise) and can only find one local news article from there - but no details as to what time this kicks off and whether it's being televised or not?
 
If anyone on the US side of the pond has any updates - can they post them here?

Many thanks!
 
KGET TV has a FB page. They said they are streaming live from/through FB. It started at 830am California time...west coast time USA

Hope this helps,
 
Good!

She's where she belongs!

And by the time she gets let out she'll be 60 plus and the feminine wiles that she used to full advantage in her young life, will be long gone.

I have so much empathy for Rob's family and Sabrina and Rob's kids. Rightly or wrongly I also have a lot of empathy for Jonathan Hearn's family. He was brought up in their devout faith and something went horribly wrong - infatuation, lust, who knows, but this 22 year old became obsessed with a 33 year old married mother of two and we all know how that ended up. He planned and carried out a cold blooded murder, as a direct result of their relationship and then sought to justify it in some obscure, quasi-religious way.

He murdered his lover's husband and he did it with the full collusion of Sabrina. If she had no knowledge of it, as soon as she was told Rob was dead she would have immediately cited Jonathan Hearn as a suspect. She didn't. Everything else aside, just that one fact tells you all you need to know about Sabrina, her motivations and this case.

I think she is a person of limited intelligence who used her body and sexuality to get her what she wanted throughout her life up until the point she met Jonathan Hearn and afterwards. She isn't the world's greatest beauty, but coloured, tinted and styled long blonde hair, good use of facial cosmetics, and open, smiling and welcome personality and a slim, neat figure with an overt sexuality ... Sabrina could 'pull' as we say here in the UK. Sabrina could get men interested in her.

If friends' testimony is to be believed it was Sabrina who wanted to open up the marriage, to spice up their sex life, to experience intimacy with other people. I don't think there's any doubt Sabrina was sexually voracious. The accusation is that it was Rob who wanted to trade partners, share his wife with others and so on (as the defence claims) does not stand up under scruinty. There would have been testimony and witnesses to prove this and there were none.

I don't have any doubt at all that Sabrina planned and plotted the murder of her husband with her besotted and easy influenced lover. The fact that he was the one who drove there and shot Rob, doesn't make her any less culpable.
 

Thankyou for that link... I'm on the other side of the Pacific from California ( the better side) and ahead in time..

well. .. one can hardly blame Sabrina's new attorney,, it was money for jam, probably the sister's money, but who cares... people want the impossible, and there are people out there who are willing to go along with that delusion.

Watching Sabrina during this hearing, one can only feel a pang of sympathy for her original attorney, Terry. Of course, he tried to prepare her, but it would have taken a lifetime. Sabrina took 10 minutes to think around a simple answer of yes or no on the stand, and life just doesn't have that kind of time to spare.

Of course, he , her original attorney, tried to get her to practice her presentation and participatory manner, but he was pushing *advertiser censored* uphill with a pointed stick, Sabrina just wasn't into learning. Learning anything at all at any time.

And it was obvious that Judge Brownlee had no doubts at all that Sabrina was a liar, a fool , a discombobulator and a hornswoggler. .. not a shadow of a doubt.

She still looked as dumb as a box of rocks. One would think she would have tried, while in prison awaiting her hearing , to at last realise her limited appeal and try to arrange her face into a position of interest and intelligence and remorse, but no!!.. not a bit of it!... still with the offended and martyr projection, still with the fixed idea of her being just a good time gal.

25 years isn't enough, really. Thankfully , her children will be spared her input into their no doubt difficult life ahead, but at least they will not be weighed down with her imposed stupidity on them, it may be the only advantage they have.
 
I found it gently risible that her new attorney was surprised that Sabrina was so awful on the stand, a trainwreck, she called it, that went on and on.. thing is, it was a trainwreck of a crime, a crime that had at it's very core the combined stupidity of two people who had no insight whatsoever into their own, or each other's degree of stupid.

And that's what you wind up with when you combine stupid, without any sensible input at all, you get a crime that is so transparent the San Bernadino prosecutor must have known immediately that he had a slam dunk on his desk, a smooth ride to an unarguable prosecution and conviction for murder for two people who were far better off quarantined from the community.


As to their combined survivability in prison for the next 1/4 of a century, that is a dicey prospect. They both have to cultivate a heavy dose of the smarts very quickly or they will be used mercilessly in prison... Hearn, maybe, Sabrina, hardly... Hearn has smarts, of a particularly useless kind, Sabrina has none, it doesn't bode well for her, or him.
 
Thankyou for that link... I'm on the other side of the Pacific from California ( the better side) and ahead in time..

well. .. one can hardly blame Sabrina's new attorney,, it was money for jam, probably the sister's money, but who cares... people want the impossible, and there are people out there who are willing to go along with that delusion.

Watching Sabrina during this hearing, one can only feel a pang of sympathy for her original attorney, Terry. Of course, he tried to prepare her, but it would have taken a lifetime. Sabrina took 10 minutes to think around a simple answer of yes or no on the stand, and life just doesn't have that kind of time to spare.

Of course, he , her original attorney, tried to get her to practice her presentation and participatory manner, but he was pushing *advertiser censored* uphill with a pointed stick, Sabrina just wasn't into learning. Learning anything at all at any time.

And it was obvious that Judge Brownlee had no doubts at all that Sabrina was a liar, a fool , a discombobulator and a hornswoggler. .. not a shadow of a doubt.

She still looked as dumb as a box of rocks. One would think she would have tried, while in prison awaiting her hearing , to at last realise her limited appeal and try to arrange her face into a position of interest and intelligence and remorse, but no!!.. not a bit of it!... still with the offended and martyr projection, still with the fixed idea of her being just a good time gal.

25 years isn't enough, really. Thankfully , her children will be spared her input into their no doubt difficult life ahead, but at least they will not be weighed down with her imposed stupidity on them, it may be the only advantage they have.


Hahahaha - your post cracked me up - funny as hell, cruel ... but very true!

:laughcry:
 
Thankyou for that link... I'm on the other side of the Pacific from California ( the better side) and ahead in time..

well. .. one can hardly blame Sabrina's new attorney,, it was money for jam, probably the sister's money, but who cares... people want the impossible, and there are people out there who are willing to go along with that delusion.

Watching Sabrina during this hearing, one can only feel a pang of sympathy for her original attorney, Terry. Of course, he tried to prepare her, but it would have taken a lifetime. Sabrina took 10 minutes to think around a simple answer of yes or no on the stand, and life just doesn't have that kind of time to spare.

Of course, he , her original attorney, tried to get her to practice her presentation and participatory manner, but he was pushing *advertiser censored* uphill with a pointed stick, Sabrina just wasn't into learning. Learning anything at all at any time.

And it was obvious that Judge Brownlee had no doubts at all that Sabrina was a liar, a fool , a discombobulator and a hornswoggler. .. not a shadow of a doubt.

She still looked as dumb as a box of rocks. One would think she would have tried, while in prison awaiting her hearing , to at last realise her limited appeal and try to arrange her face into a position of interest and intelligence and remorse, but no!!.. not a bit of it!... still with the offended and martyr projection, still with the fixed idea of her being just a good time gal.

25 years isn't enough, really. Thankfully , her children will be spared her input into their no doubt difficult life ahead, but at least they will not be weighed down with her imposed stupidity on them, it may be the only advantage they have.

Great wording! I'm going to start using hornswoggler immediately!


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I've just rewatched Sabrina's sentencing and then revisited Jonathan Hearn's where he makes the long emotional speech of repentance and apology.

Now don't get me wrong - I'm not making excuses for him, he's a cold-blooded killer who planned and carried out a murder of an innocent man. No one can excuse that and he deserves his sentence and more.

However, he was 22 years old when he met Sabrina with very little experience with women and he comes from an incredibly religious sheltered background, home schooled and a life that revolved around his family, siblings and church, and I'm just wondering whether this had any bearing on her ability to not only get him to conspire to commit a murder, but to actually carry it out?

By that I suppose I'm asking did it make him more 'vulnerable' to Sabrina's charms, because she was so different, such a contrast to everything he'd known growing up?

I just can't get my head around why this tall, nice looking young man, deeply religious who everyone says is incredibly intelligent, was so besotted by a married woman 11 years older than him - who with the greatest respect (and obviously I've only got what we've seen it court to go on) is odd looking at best, and doesn't seem to have been overly endowed with brain cells? Trooper described her as looking 'dumb as a box of rocks' and that's certainly how she comes across in court - like the lights are on but no-one's home.

Looking at them both separately - it's such a bizarre relationship - you would never put those two together in a million years. The swinging, drinking, party girl and the studious, religious, hyper-intelligent paramedic. Even if their plan had succeeded could you actually imagine those two married?

I'd be interested to hear what others think.
 

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