by Paul R. Spitzzeri
With a guilty verdict rendered in just some 45 minutes and the death penalty handed down on Philip A. Goodwin, an American Catholic Church priest, actor and ex-convict, in October 1926 in the case of the murder of Los Angeles bond broker Joseph J. Patterson in Santa Ana Canyon in northeastern Orange County, it seemed he was due to be executed by hanging at San Quentin State Prison in mid-January 1927.
Right away, however, Goodwin and his lawyer, Kitt Gould, insisted there was new evidence that could provide an alibi and exonerate the former and an advertisement in the personal column of Angel City newspapers was taken, seeking someone who would have spoken to Goodwin at a San Diego Y.M.C.A. when Patterson was killed. The attorney’s plan was to use this as a justification for a motion for a new trial, as was the insistence that Julian Petroleum Company stock was taken from Patterson from Albert D. Gaines, Goodwin’s compatriot and who was awaiting his preliminary hearing on the case. Even though Goodwin sold the stock and collected most of the proceeds, he asserted Gaines asked him to make the transaction and to use the money for a play Goodwin wished to mount.
Orange County Superior Court Emerson J. Marks, who presided in a red sandstone courthouse that is now the county archives, denied the motion and the 14 January date was sent for Goodwin to be suspended from the gallows at San Quentin. The condemned man, with his penchant for the dramatic befitting a thespian, even issued invitations to the execution. Yet, when Gould filed, as was common, for a stay of execution, explaining that he had likely exculpatory evidence for a new trial, the California Supreme Court agreed—it was later reported that, out of ten men sentenced to die in 1926, Goodwin was the only to win a stay.
The question was whether the high court would deny or uphold Goodwin’s appeal of his conviction, the first, of course, meaning a rescheduling of his date with the hangman’s noose, through, as the Santa Ana Register of 13 January 1927 put it, “treading the 13 steps to eternity,” or order a new trial. With regard to capital punishment, this became an issue at the end of that month, as debates, which are perennial, about whether state-sanctioned execution of prisoners should continue to be legal. Judge Marks was quoted in the Anaheim Bulletin of the 31st as remarking,
I hold no brief for capital punishment . . . [referring to a bill in the state legislature about the matter] If a murderer can be sent to prison, with the assurance that he will stay there for life, I am for such a law. However I must appear somewhat contradictory. I know of one case where, in my opinion, the death penalty was the only proper punishment. That was the case of Mose Gibson, the black beast. That murderer could not be allowed to remain on the face of the earth.
Why the ethnicity and race of Gibson, who committed a rash of crimes and killings in several states and killed a Fullerton rancher while beating and raping his wife, for which he was executed in 1920, was deemed of note, obviously, is a question. There were those, however, who questioned the veracity of Gibson’s confessions and his guilt in some of the crimes attributed to him, while he also professed to be drunk on wood alcohol when he committed the Orange County crimes. Notably, other Orange County jurists cited the death penalty as a deterrent, while some disabused that notion—arguments that continue to this day.
In any case, on 1 February, Gould and his daughter, Rhoda, who assisted her sight-impaired father by reading documents and other tasks, returned to Santa Ana, with the Register reporting that there were four main items on their to-do list on behalf of Goodwin. These were purportedly having more evidence as to Gaines’ guilt concerning a ring he pawned in Salt Lake City after returning to his home state following the murder, an anonymous confession written by someone who wrote that Patterson “wronged him years ago,” news that the Supreme Court would hear the appeal soon and word that a defense fund from British Columbia, where Goodwin was born and raised, was underway.
The letter was from Ohio, though mailed from Detroit on 20 December and was reprinted in full, with grammatical and spelling errors intact, and here is a sample:
You are an innocent man.
I am the man who slew J.J. Patterson who did me a grate rong in years gone bye . . .
So hopping you will meete youre fate withe oute any feer.
May you reste easy in heaven.
Closed with best wishese.
As ever A.K.K.K.
You do not no me.
The Gould professed to make no comment on the letter, putting more hope on the Salt Lake City ring pawning, while it was added that a 241-page brief to the high court alleged judicial error and misconduct by District Attorney Alexander P. Nelson and was submitted by San Francisco lawyer and British consul, Vincent Surr, who joined the legal team defending Goodwin, though he and Gould quickly got into conflict about their respective roles.
The Register remarked that the brief called Goodwin “diminutive” and “weak,” as if incapable of killing Patterson (who was said by Gaines to be incapacitated by liquor), while Surr took the opportunity to cast aspersions on Los Angeles and Santa Ana, claiming “you don’t need evidence to win a case before a Santa Ana jury.” This was because of negative connotations used by the D.A. and his deputy as to Goodwin’s clerical status, but also because, “the Ku Klux element is appealed to,” with respect to the convict’s position as an American Catholic (distinct from Roman Catholic). What wasn’t explained was how this squared with the letter from “A.K.K.K.”
Gaines fired back and did so, reported the Register of the 4th, by “hurling defiance and derision” at Gould, by commenting,
After a long interval of calm, the stillness has again been turned into chaos . . . I can’t possibly see the reason on the part of the trickly, scheming, devising Mr. Gould in having such authentic [meant mockingly] letters published, unless it is to prejudice the minds of the people against me . . . My testimony has been discredited by fake letters, fake confessions, etc. But I can sincerely state that no person or persons can appear personally and discredit my testimony.
Gaines soon faced trial, which we’ll discuss in part four of this post, but the appeal for Goodwin took a good deal of time. Meanwhile, the Bulletin of 8 March informed readers that “J. Mackelbride,” who wrote a letter to Gould that Patterson was actually accidentally killed by Gaines’ car as they were heading, without Goodwin, back from Tijuana and this led to Nelson and Gould going to San Diego to meet the writer, who didn’t show, was found and interviewed by the Goulds in Missouri.
Moreover, in separate letters, Mackelbride talked of Gaines manipulating the rented car’s speedometer to literally cover his tracks with respect to his alleged disposal of Patterson’s body at Santa Ana Canyon and then returning to San Diego to pick up Goodwin. It was also stated that Gaines, who had a prior forgery conviction in the Fresno area that led to his imprisonment at San Quentin, wrote the pair of letters purporting to be from Patterson and which had the “Tui Juana” misspelling that, at trial, was attributed to Goodwin.
It was added that the Goulds traversed much of the Show Me State trying to meet with Mackelbride who professed fear of being arrested, because he said he was present at Patterson’s purported accidental death, but that they finally got him to sign an affidavit in Kansas City. Gould claimed he could bring Mackelbride, said to be in Indiana, to testify or to appear before Governor C.C. Young for a clemency appeal.
The 27 October number of the Register included a feature on “the dapper little priest who startled Orange county by his coolness and audacity” and noted that, when sheriff’s deputies took prisoners to San Quentin, they found that “Goodwin has changed not a bit, in appearance or mentally” and was “enjoying luxuries,” such as decent cigars, as well as donations to his defense fund, up to thousands of dollars. Much of the contributions came to women “and Goodwin in answering . . . never fails . . . to refer to himself as a priest.”
On 2 December came the news that the state supreme court granted Goodwin a new trial. While the Bulletin ran a headline of “Goodwin Expected to be Freed of Murder Charge,” based on speculation based on reports the high court justices found his testimony more credible than that of Gaines, while also finding that Goodwin’s performance under intense cross-examination represented a truism that such was “the acid test of truth.” Nelson’s successor, Zephaniah B. West, Jr., of a family of well-known Orange County legal figures, did not believe dismissal was in the cards.
The Register, however, reported in the afternoon of the same day,
That the California supreme court has overthrown all precedents in granting a new trial to Philip Goodwin . . . was declared today by Alex. P. Nelson, former district attorney of Orange county, who prosecuted Goodwin last year.
If newspaper reports are correct, according to Nelson, this is the firs time that the higher court has reversed a superior court decision in a case of this kind under the reasons specified.
Among the cited reasons were insufficient instructions by Judge Marks to the jury with regard to mitigating circumstances that would disallow a death sentence; that the testimony of Gaines was less trustworthy than that of Goodwin; that evidence was mostly circumstantial; that the affidavits submitted by Gould, as expressed by the paper, “are entitled to consideration because they appeared to establish an alibi for Goodwin; and, lastly, that the “acid test of truth” was important with respect to Goodwin’s testimony.
While Goodwin initially considered seeking a change of venue to San Francisco, where his new lawyer Surr lived and worked, it was decided not to contest a second trial at Santa Ana. The Bulletin of 16 February 1928 told readers “sensational accusations involving former and present Orange county officials connected with his first prosecution, were promised by the Rev. Philip A. Goodwin today as he prepared for his second trial.” It was added that “he refused to discuss details of the prophesy, but remarked, “before I get through with this matter” he would “bend his best efforts toward landing them in jail,” citing handling of personal property.
In its edition of the 18th, the Anaheim sheet quoted West as saying that the prosecution’s case would be essentially repeated “with modifications in some respects, and a rearrangement of the presentation,” while a new defense attorney, Buel Wood, assisted by O.A. Jacobs, merely said that his objective was simply a not guilty verdict. West admitted the possibility of some surprises from his side and 37 witnesses were to be called, with 7 from the defense. A new California statute allowed the state to have as many peremptory juror challenges, 20, as the defense and Wood remarked that he was happy to have women in the jury, as the paper paraphrased, because they possessed “a keener insight than male jurors, and in many instances, owning a high sense of justice.”
The trial got underway on the 20th, with jury selection, involving few challenges and with three women seated (there was one in the first proceeding), handled quickly, as it was in the first proceeding and Deputy D.A. Lewis W. Blodget provided the opening statement. Witnesses then offered testimony, but there was noticeably less coverage in terms of column space and ink utilized, likely because this was the second go-round, but the big news was the refusal of Gaines to testify. The Bulletin of the 22nd reported on the “series of sensations, which temporarily disrupted the calm tenor” and which “left observers of the case in a state of uncertainty.”
It added that Gaines was cited for contempt, though there was chatter that his residency in prison, though his final term (more on his trial in part four) was not yet determined by the prison board, as his sentence was 10 years to life, likely had an influence on his decision to thumb his nose at the matter. Wood, barely able to control his pleasure at the situation, offered the idea that Gaines was angling for a pardon and commented, “if Gaines will not testify, the prosecution might as well dismiss the case and let everybody go home and forget all about it,” not seeming to consider the Patterson family as he said this.
When Gaines was brought back to court the following day and, again, was determined to refrain from testifying, he did remark that he’d made an unspecified deal with county officials during the first trial in exchange for his testimony, but was reminded by Judge Marks that he said in that proceeding “that no promises of immunity had been given to him.” Gaines then essentially “took the Fifth” concerning possible incrimination, though he was already in prison regarding the matter—again, we’ll return to this in looking at his trial, but it is worth noting here that there was a new District Attorney and deputy, as well as deputy sheriff, so the matter of any promises made to Gaines were to be examined from that perspective. Wood then was granted permission to raise an objection if Gaines was brought back a third time regarding possible prejudice, but there was no such attempt.
As confident as Wood might have been about his client’s chances for acquittal, the Bulletin of the 27th cited Goodwin as stating that he hoped that “Gaines would go ahead and testify,” but then added that any supposed deal for his former partner only supported his contention that “there was a conspiracy . . . in the former district attorney’s office to cnvict [sic] [me] by any means; that this conspiracy was to make [me] a political football and secure the election of the prosecuting officers.”
Despite Gaines not testifying, the trial continued and one of the key defense witnesses, Billy Middleton, a convict associate of Gaines and Goodwin, asserted that the former wrote the “Tui Juana” letters and did so in his office and was steadfast during cross-examination. When West, however, asked Middleton to identify Gaines, who was seated in the gallery directly opposite, the witness could not pick him out. When Wood inquired if Gaines wore glasses when this letter-writing supposedly happened and the question was not allowed, West asked the witness to try again, knowing that the spectacles would be in play, but Middleton, once more, could not place Gaines. He even brushed against him as he left the stand, but showed no indication of recognition and, while Wood, sought to allow Middleton to remain in court, possibly for more testimony, but apparently hoping he’d come around to recognizing Gaines, West succeeded in having Middleton returned to jail.
Another point of contention concerned Los Angeles handwriting expert Milton Carlson, who testified in the first trial, as well, with respect to who wrote on Patterson’s check and who endorsed his Julian Petroleum stock, with the defense averring that Carlson committed perjury because of various statements he made on these points. Blodget, who conducted the closing argument for the prosecution, countered that Middleton was certainly guilty of that crime and, as with the earlier proceeding, devoted attention to the “Tui Juana” letters and Goodwin’s prior admission that one of these was his. Notably, despite claims that there would be new defense witnesses, this promised by the fired Gould, none were brought forward—this was a reason for the state supreme court granting a new trial.
Goodwin publicly professed confidence in victory and wrote a play called “Miss Justice,” which concerned all of the injustices he allegedly suffered in the first trial and, while the jury deliberated longer and went through 20, instead of 2, ballots, though it was 11-1 in the first and, finally, unanimous, he was again found guilty, with the jury recommending life imprisonment, though four members initially favored execution. Notably, the dozen deliberators asked, in the middle of their consideration of Goodwin’s fate, whether, if they determined the life sentence, Judge Marks could overrule them. He did not directly answer, but repeated his instruction that one of the verdicts available was for murder in the first degree punishable by a life sentence.
Returned to the county hoosegow, Goodwin again insisted that, if Gaines was forced to testify again, and truthfully, he would have been exonerated, and said he would appeal the verdict, as well as seek a third trial. He praised Blodget and Wood, in contrast to Nelson and his deputy at the first proceeding, while also thanking jail employees for their treatment of him. Judge Marks then sentenced Goodwin to serve his life sentence at Folsom State Prison, where Gaines was housed, and he was received there on 20 March, with the 30-year old citing his occupation as “minister.” His mug shot, with his hair wildly arrayed, is a far cry from the dapper depictions in other photos, though his registration card claimed that his true name was the alias of Sam Reader found on the forget documents stolen from Patterson’s body.
In late September, the state appeals court upheld the conviction, ruling there was no prosecutorial misconduct and error in the judge’s jury instructions as claimed in the appeal. This was followed two months later by the same body refusing a motion for a third trial citing the same reasons for the identical claims. If there was an appeal to the state supreme court, this could not be located. The 1930 census enumerated Goodwin at Folsom, working, as Gaines was, in the blacksmith shop and there were attempts to seek parole, though he remained confined until his death on 31 August 1942.
We’ll return next to Albert Gaines and his 1927 trial for the murder of Joseph J. Patterson, but also detail some of his subsequent history, much of it criminal, over almost three decades, so check back for that.