Driving getaway car ruled not a life-without-parole crime

Driving a getaway car in a fatal armed robbery is grounds for a murder conviction. But it’s not enough for a capital crime, the state Supreme Court has ruled in a case that defines new limits on California’s death penalty law.

Thursday’s unanimous decision overturned the life-without-parole sentence of the getaway driver in an October 2008 break-in at a Los Angeles medical marijuana dispensary in which a security guard was fatally shot. The court said the driver, Lovie Troy Matthews, though guilty of the murder, was not a “major participant” subject to a no-parole sentence — or to a death sentence, which the prosecution did not seek.

There was no evidence that Matthews “knew his own actions would involve a grave risk of death,” Justice Kathryn Mickle Werdegar said in the 7-0 ruling. She said the driver may have known he was taking part in an armed robbery but did not supply the weapons, attend or play any direct role in the fatal shooting, intend to kill, or conspire with those he knew had killed others.

Matthews is still likely to spend the rest of his life in prison, as he faces a sentence of up to 80 years to life, based on his previous record, said his appellate lawyer, Danalynn Pritz. But she said the ruling would benefit other defendants and was a sign of change on a court that recently added two new justices, Mariano-Florentino Cuéllar and Leondra Kruger, both appointees of Gov. Jerry Brown.

“It’s encouraging from a defense perspective,” Pritz said. “I feel like they’re listening to what we’re saying.”

Evan Lee, a constitutional law professor at UC Hastings in San Francisco, agreed that the ruling should make defense lawyers “cautiously optimistic” about the newly composed court.

The guard at the La Brea Collective, Noe Gonzalez, was shot and killed by one of the robbers, Leon Banks, during a struggle as Banks and two other men were trying to flee, the court said. Matthews then drove up in an SUV and two of the robbers jumped in. Police soon stopped the vehicle and arrested the robbers. Banks and a second man, Brandon Daniels, were sentenced to life without parole for the murder, and the third robber, David Gardiner, got 45 years to life.

Matthews, a member of the same gang to which Daniels and Gardiner belonged, was found guilty of first-degree murder as a participant in a felony in which someone was killed. But the court said he was not guilty of murder with “special circumstances,” as California defines capital crimes, because he was not a major participant in the fatal shooting.

A 1990 ballot measure authorized a sentence of death or life without parole for accomplices in fatal crimes without proof that they intended to kill. But Werdegar said the court was bound by the constitutional standard set by the U.S. Supreme Court in 1987, which allowed a death sentence only when a driver or other accomplice is substantially involved in the fatal crime and shows a “reckless indifference to the grave risk of death created by (his) actions.”

That generally isn’t the case for someone whose only role is driving the getaway car, she said.

The case is People vs. Banks, S213819.