State Justices Affirm Death Penalty for Getaway Car Driver

The California Supreme Court on Thursday unanimously affirmed the death penalty for a Chino man who drove the getaway car in the 1983 robbery-murder of an armored truck guard in Stockton.

Except for cases involving murder for hire, the case appeared to be the first in which justices upheld a death sentence for a defendant who is not the actual killer, attorneys said.

The high court, in an opinion by Justice Stanley Mosk, rejected an appeal by Patrick Bruce Gordon, now 33, and upheld a jury finding that as a participant in the robbery plot with his two brothers, Gordon demonstrated sufficient intent to kill to warrant the death penalty.

Among other things, jurors heard evidence that Gordon had been the actual triggerman in the killing of another armored car guard in a similar robbery in Riverside in 1982. Gordon has not yet been tried in that case.

The three brothers were implicated by authorities in a series of 18 such holdups at K mart stores throughout the state.

Patrick Gordon’s brothers, Bernard Gordon and Michael Caputo, were convicted in separate trials as the actual killers of William C. Wiley in the Stockton robbery and both were sentenced to life in prison without parole.

State Assistant Public Defender Michael Tanaka expressed disappointment with Thursday’s ruling and said another appeal will be filed challenging Patrick Gordon’s death sentence as unconstitutionally disproportionate to the lesser sentences received by the two triggermen. “We think we have a compelling argument on that issue,” Tanaka said.

State Assistant Atty. Gen. Arnold O. Overoye predicted such a challenge would fail. “His intent and culpability were well-established in this case and there was considerable evidence he was the actual killer in the Riverside case,” Overoye noted.

At the trial, Patrick Gordon contended he was the victim of mistaken identity and presented testimony from his mother-in-law that he was in Southern California at the time of the murder of the guard in Stockton.

The prosecution presented testimony from an eyewitness identifying Patrick Gordon as in the driver’s seat of a car with two other men near the scene of the robbery, as well as other evidence connecting the three brothers with the Stockton and Riverside crimes.