He says he’s no assassin, that’s why he’s nonetheless in jail

When Joseph Gordon, a 78-year-old man who has spent almost three many years in jail for homicide, went earlier than the New York state parole board in March, among the many letters supporting his bid for freedom was a rare attraction.
In addition to endorsements from corrections officers, civilian jail workers and a psychiatric social employee was a letter from a former superintendent at Fishkill Correctional Facility, in Beacon, New York. The superintendent, Leroy Fields, famous that in his greater than 37 years as a corrections official, Gordon was solely the second inmate he had ever really useful for launch. Gordon, he wrote, has “the character and moral compass to return to society as a productive member of his community.”
The parole board remained unpersuaded. “Your release at this time is not compatible with the welfare of society,” the panel dominated, “and would so deprecate the serious nature of your crime as to undermine respect for the law.” It was the fifth parole denial that Gordon had acquired since 2017, when he accomplished the minimal time period of his sentence of 25 years to life in jail.
In their selections, board members centered mainly on a single and apparently unforgivable flaw: He insists he’s harmless of the crime that despatched him to jail. Gordon, who’s Black, was convicted of the 1991 homicide of a white Westchester County physician. His refusal to confess guilt, the parole panel dominated, confirmed that he lacked regret for his crime.
It is a conundrum confronted by scores of prisoners who insist they don’t seem to be responsible. “The board expects them to accept responsibility and express remorse,” mentioned Michelle Lewin, government director of the Parole Preparation Project. “People who maintain their innocence remain in an impossible situation.”
Gordon’s state of affairs could also be extra unattainable than most. He admits that after Dr. Daniel Pack, a 38-year-old neurologist with a spouse and two younger kids, was shot to dying within the basement of Gordon’s house in Elmsford, New York, he coated up the homicide. He admits to hiding the physique in a distant wooded space in Putnam County and ditching the physician’s automotive in a New Jersey parking zone. But he insists that he didn’t kill Pack. He has lengthy hesitated to say who did and why.
“The person that committed the murder was young, very young at that time, and I did what I did in order to protect that person,” he mentioned at his first look earlier than the board, in 2017.

Citing Gordon’s “lack of full disclosure,” the board rejected him. At his subsequent listening to, and for the primary time in additional than 25 years, he personally recognized the shooter: It was his son, Chad, he mentioned, who was 16 on the time. Gordon mentioned he had returned house to seek out Chad had shot Pack throughout an argument over a secret sexual relationship between them. He didn’t name police as a result of he feared what may befall his son in jail.
At every listening to, commissioners cited the jury’s verdict at his 1993 trial, the place Gordon was convicted of capturing Pack throughout what prosecutors mentioned was a combat over hundreds of {dollars} they’d invested collectively in uncommon baseball playing cards. Parole commissioners quoted Judge John Sweeny Jr.’s feedback at sentencing that Gordon’s protection had provided “a concocted story of a homosexual argument … that underscored the coldblooded and ruthless nature of this crime.”
While residing in California within the Seventies, Gordon married a girl and had a son. They separated when the kid was not but 2. Gordon moved again east and settled in Elmsford, the place he had grown up. Chad remained together with his mom in California, visiting his dad on holidays.
Gordon started buying and selling baseball playing cards, he mentioned, in a bid to attract nearer to his son. In 1991, nonetheless, Chad solid a grade on his faculty report card, and his mother and father determined he ought to reside together with his father for some time. Gordon enrolled him in a Catholic highschool and put him to work on the sports activities memorabilia store he operated in Rockland County. It was on a kind of afternoons, Dec. 20, 1991, Gordon mentioned, that he requested his son to attend at house handy off a bundle of cash and playing cards to Pack, with whom he had been investing in collectible baseball playing cards over the earlier 12 months.
After dropping off his son on the home, Gordon mentioned he drove to his store to seek out a number of messages on his answering machine from Chad begging him to come back house. He raced again to seek out his son within the basement, Pack’s physique close by. His actions over the following hours, he mentioned, have been pushed by panic over what would occur to his son if he was arrested.
Although his legal professionals would outright accuse Chad of killing the physician on the trial, Gordon had by no means wished to say it himself and refused to take the stand. “I was not going to be compelled to testify against my son,” he mentioned. “I was not going to put my son in prison.”
The prosecution introduced the case as a easy combat over cash. District Attorney James Rooney argued that on the day he was killed, Pack had gone to Gordon’s home to confront him over some $70,000 he had invested in baseball playing cards. Pack, the prosecutor mentioned, “never got a penny” from his funding. Rooney mentioned that somewhat than pay him again, Gordon killed him.
Testimony confirmed that the physician was killed in Gordon’s basement, the place fragments from Pack’s eyeglasses have been discovered. The one shred of forensic proof at odds with the prosecution’s account was the presence of a small quantity of semen that an post-mortem present in Pack’s mouth. At the time, nonetheless, the quantity was too small to find out the supply. The most definitely rationalization, the district lawyer informed the jury, was that the semen had been deposited there by “the last person to see Dr. Pack alive” — that means the defendant — in a weird bid to confuse investigators.
But essentially the most highly effective witness in opposition to Gordon was his son.
On the witness stand, Chad mentioned that on the day Pack was killed, his father picked him up at college at 2:30 p.m. and dropped him off on the retailer. He mentioned he labored there and at a close-by meals stand till late that night time.
The jury deliberated for a day earlier than discovering Gordon responsible. Reached in California, the place he lives, Chad Gordon mentioned he nonetheless believed in his father’s guilt and denied any involvement in Pack’s dying. “My father is a sociopath,” he mentioned earlier than hanging up. His mom didn’t reply to messages.
In 1996, three years after his conviction, an article about Gordon’s appeals caught the attention of a girl who had lived throughout the road from him on the time of the homicide. The neighbor, Elizabeth Deerr, mentioned she had not informed her story to police on the time as a result of her mother-in-law, whose home she lived in, warned her to not get entangled.
In an affidavit filed with the courtroom in December 1996, she mentioned that about 3:30 p.m. on the day of the homicide, she noticed Gordon drop off his son at his house, then drive away. Fifteen minutes later, she noticed a “white fancy car” pull up. A tall, skinny white man emerged and was met by Chad on the entrance of the house. Deerr noticed Chad directing the person to the again of the home. She by no means noticed Chad or the person go away the home or Gordon return.
Citing the affidavit, Gordon filed a brand new attraction. The decide who had presided on the trial denied it. Deerr, who’s white, mentioned she regretted not coming ahead earlier. “I always hoped he would get another trial and I could tell my story,” she mentioned. “Things could’ve been different for Joe.”
In 2003, Gordon requested the Innocence Project, a nonprofit group specializing in DNA evaluation, to take up his case. The mission’s legal professionals pressed the Putnam County district lawyer’s workplace to permit specialists to look at the semen. The workplace finally agreed, however repeated assessments failed to supply outcomes. It was not till 2015 that conclusive findings emerged: Neither Gordon nor his son was the supply of the semen. Experts additionally decided it couldn’t have been deposited after Pack’s dying.
To Gordon and his legal professionals on the Innocence Project, the brand new findings added credibility to his assertion that Pack had intercourse with males and disproved the assertion by the prosecutor at his trial that Gordon had positioned the semen there himself.
The parole board has cited “extensive and vehement community opposition” to Gordon’s launch. Pack’s widow, Margit Pack, has steadily advocated for Gordon to stay in jail. “Daniel Pack will never get out of the grave, and I hope Joseph Gordon never gets out of jail,” she mentioned after the conviction.
This month, Gordon faces his sixth parole board listening to.
In the meantime, he’s working as a grievance counselor, representing prisoners on medical and different points.
As he sat speaking to a customer just lately, a passing officer gave the prisoner a uncommon seal of approval. “This guy’s top-notch,” the guard mentioned, gesturing at Gordon.