Man Pleads Guilty to Stabbing

A convicted carjacker pleaded guilty Monday to stabbing his defense lawyer with a makeshift plastic knife moments after the carjacker had received a life sentence under the state’s “three-strikes” law.

John Patrick McGuire, 25, of Riverside, was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for the knife attack, which also counted as a third “strike,” his new lawyer, Ernest Eady, said.

Another judge had just sentenced McGuire to 30 years to life in prison last June when he leaned over, his hands in cuffs, and wordlessly stabbed at his then-lawyer, Jerome J. Goldfein.

The veteran Santa Ana attorney was not hurt, and marshal’s deputies quickly tackled McGuire.

Witnesses said McGuire apparently had smuggled the 5-inch knife in an envelope containing a handwritten letter he intended to read before Superior Court Judge Richard L. Weatherspoon. The blade bent and glanced off Goldfein’s shoulder.

McGuire, whose two earlier convictions were for burglary and attempted robbery in 1989, was found guilty last May of a 1994 carjacking at a Westminster Lexus dealership.

Authorities said McGuire, who had been released from prison the same day as the carjacking, pretended to be car shopping but pushed aside the sales agent and drove off. An acquaintance of McGuire’s later stole the car from him but was caught after being stopped for speeding, authorities said.

With the two new sentences, McGuire will serve more than 40 years in prison before he is eligible for parole, Eady said. He had faced an even stiffer sentence had he opted against the plea agreement and gone to trial.

The defendant accepted his latest sentence Monday with an “easygoing” manner, Eady said.

“He was more or less resigned to what was going to happen.”