Man faces trial in second attack on a lawyer

The Times reported last week on the death of Judge Charles Gordon, an administrative law judge for the state Worker's Compensation Appeals Board who was given a Carnegie Medal for heroism after he disarmed a gunman in 1991 in his downtown courtroom.

Now Mulji Patel, the man who had a .22-caliber pistol wrested away by Gordon as he held it to the head of a Rockwell International Corp. attorney, is awaiting trial in Pasadena for allegedly attacking a second Rockwell lawyer, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney's office said.

The 70-year-old Arcadia resident, who has pleaded not guilty in the case, is charged with two counts of assault with a deadly weapon after prosecutors say he smuggled a hammer into a Pasadena doctor's office on Jan. 31, 2006, and used it to strike attorney Irwin A. Nepomuceno in the head and body.

Nepomuceno was representing Rockwell International Corp. in the same worker's compensation case that prompted the initial attack more than a decade ago, said Jane Robison, a spokeswoman for the Los Angeles County district attorney.

If convicted of the charges, Patel faces a maximum sentence of 18 years in state prison, Robison said. In 1991, he served three months of a yearlong county jail sentence for the incident involving Rockwell attorney Lynn P. Peterson.

In that incident, Judge Gordon, according to The Times' obituary, "calmly walked toward the gunman and, with what Peterson later described as a 'low, soothing voice you use to put kids to sleep,' tried to calm the situation. Patel pressed the gun harder against the head of Peterson, who reached up to swat the weapon away."

Gordon told The Times later that "I was more worried about her than myself, so I lunged at him and we fell [over the counsel's table] to the floor. The gun fell out of his hand, and Lynn grabbed it."

Initially, there were no armed bailiffs in the courtroom. The weapon  was later found to be unloaded, and Patel was arrested.

-- Andrew Blankstein