Who is Patrick Goodman? Child Killer Poses Dilemma For Gavin Newsom

Californian officials have approved parole for a man who beat his girlfriend's 3-year-old son to death, sparking public outrage amid a debate about lenient sentencing—and posing a dilemma over intervening for state Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som.

Patrick Goodman murdered Elijah Sanderson in December 2000 and tried to frame the child's mother for the crime.

He had become outraged with the boy after he let the family dog into the house. Goodman later admitted that he grabbed Sanderson and repeatedly slammed him against a wall.

The au­topsy re­port de­tailed in­juries rang­ing from a bro­ken neck and bro­ken ribs to a sev­ered bowel and a sev­ered re­nal artery. Fifty sep­a­rate ex­ter­nal in­juries were recorded, the anti-crime website, San Francisco Public Safety reported.

Goodman, who previously served a two-year sentence for injuring a man in a hit and run, was con­victed of mur­der and child abuse in 2002 and was sen­tenced at San Fran­cisco Su­pe­rior Court to a term of 25 years to life in prison.

His re­lease was ap­proved by the state Board of Pa­role Hear­ings on De­cem­ber 14, 2023. During the hearing, Goodman told the parole board: "I hope that one day I will be able to show Eli­jah's fam­ily, so­ci­ety and every­one who got caught in the rip­ple ef­fect of my ac­tions, that I'm no longer the mon­ster that I used to be."

Dur­ing the hear­ing Good­man said that he killed Sanderson be­cause he had let the fam­ily dog into the house. He also ad­mit­ted ly­ing in court when he ac­cused Eli­jah's mother of mur­der­ing her own child. When challenged about whether, at the time, he was prepared to let Sanderson's mother go to prison for his actions, he replied: "I was just try­ing to get the at­ten­tion off of me".

On January 24, San Francisco Public Safety published a transcript of Goodman's parole hearing.

Commissioners Michele Minor and Dane Blake approved Goodman's release.

"We find that Mr Good­man does not cur­rently pose an un­rea­son­able risk to pub­lic safety and is therefore suitable for pa­role," Minor said after 15 minutes of deliberations following the hearing, San Francisco Public Safety reported.

The de­ci­sion was made over the ob­jec­tions of a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of San Fran­cisco Dis­trict At­tor­ney's of­fice who asked for pa­role to be de­nied for at least three more years.

"His mur­der robbed a baby child of a fourth birth­day," said as­sis­tant dis­trict at­tor­ney Vic­to­ria Mur­ray-Bal­doc­chi. "Learn­ing how to shave, his first kiss, of go­ing to col­lege, of mak­ing cards for his mother on Moth­er's Day, cel­e­brat­ing his sib­lings' birth­days."

"I sug­gest he is still in de­nial as to how bru­tal his mur­der was of this tiny lit­tle in­no­cent hu­man."

Un­less California Gov­er­nor Gavin New­som in­ter­venes, Goodman will leave state prison when the parole board's de­ci­sion re­view unit com­pletes a manda­tory check for le­gal or fac­tual er­rors in its de­ter­mi­na­tion. The Gov­er­nor may mod­ify or re­verse pa­role de­ci­sions in mur­der cases, San Francisco Public Safety reported.

We have approached Newsom for comment.

Jonathan Hatami, a district attorney candidate in Los Angeles County, called the decision "horrific" and argued that people who target defenseless children are the worst criminals.

"I've tried numerous high-profile child murders," he told Fox News Digital. "If you will murder a child, someone who is the most vulnerable in our society, you are a danger to our entire community."

Anti-crime campaigners are seeking to recall District Attorney Pamela Price in Alameda County in the San Francisco Bay Area, while Chesa Boudin, the district attorney for San Francisco city, was recalled in 2022.

The Los Angeles County DA George Gascón successfully fought off two recall attempts in two years and faces another this year.

The prosecutors who are now coming under fire had sought to break with traditional measures of being tough on all crime and have reduced prosecutions of lower-level offenses with the aim of cutting mass incarceration. Widespread calls for new approaches to justice gained momentum in the United States after the killing of George Floyd by a police officer in 2020, but attitudes in some places have since swung back.

A survey released by the Public Policy Institute of California in February 2023 found that "an overwhelming majority of California adults say violence and street crime is either a big problem or at least somewhat of a problem." Thirty percent said it was a big problem, and another 46 percent replied that it was somewhat of a problem in their community.

The share of adults saying it is at least somewhat of a problem has increased by 11 percent since February 2022, the institute said.

"Nearly half of African Americans say it is a big problem, compared to about three in 10 or fewer among Asian Americans, Latinos, and whites," the Public Policy Institute of California survey added.