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Thread: Rosendo Rodriguez III - Texas Execution - March 27, 2018

  1. #51
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    I totally agree with you or the killer claims mental retardation but spent his whole time in the law library preparing his own appeals whole studying every law book in the library
    Last edited by BeautifulSwagg; 03-28-2018 at 07:44 AM.

  2. #52
    Administrator Helen's Avatar
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    Lubbock DA: Rodriguez’s last statement in death chamber shows his nature

    By Gabriel Monte
    LubbockOnline.com

    Rosendo Rodriguez quoted Jesus, asked people to love inmates on death row and railed against the death penalty before he was executed by lethal injection Tuesday in Huntsville.

    Not one word of his seven-minute last statement was spent to ask the families who stood before him in the execution chamber for forgiveness for the slaying of two people more than a decade ago.

    ″(It) just shows who you’re dealing with,” said Matt Powell, the Lubbock County District Attorney who lead Rodriguez’s prosecution during the 2008 trial that resulted in a conviction for capital murder and a death sentence.

    He recalled Rodriguez showing no reaction as autopsy records of what Powell described as Rodriguez’s “handiwork” was shown to jurors.

    “Never any indication of remorse,” he said. “Never any indication that he was sorry for what he’s done. To me, there’s never been any sign of show of remorse that I’m aware of, of what he’s done. Ever.”

    Rodriguez used his last words to accuse Lubbock County Medical Examiner Dr. Sridhar Natarajan of falsifying autopsy records. He said he believed Powell and Natarajan paid off a former medical examiner’s office employee by settling a 2015 whistle-blower lawsuit in which she accused Natarajan of mismanaging the office. Other accusations in the lawsuit included allowing unskilled technicians to do autopsies and backdating records.

    He called for an investigation of the two, accusing them of causing wrongful convictions.

    Powell declined to respond to Rodriguez’s last statements, only saying it showed the character of the man who gained infamy as the “Suitcase Killer.”

    “He’s more concerned about those things than ever showing any remorse or telling the victims’ families he’s sorry,” Powell said. “Like somehow somebody else put him where he was. It was every bit of it his own responsibility - nobody else’s fault but his own.”

    He said he remains confident in Natarajan’s work.

    “His results have never been put in question or been a source of wrongful conviction or an accusation of a wrongful conviction,” he said.

    Rodriguez was the fourth death row inmate executed by the state this year.

    Lubbock police in 2005 arrested Rodriguez in San Antonio after linking his debit card to the purchase of a suitcase in which the body of 29-year-old Summer Baldwin was stuffed and found in a Lubbock landfill.

    Rodriguez, a Marine reservist training in Lubbock, told investigators he killed Baldwin in self defense because she attacked him after they had sex. He said he panicked and bought the suitcase, stuffed her in it and put her in a dumpster, which was unloaded in the landfill.

    Powell, using Natarajan’s findings, told jurors physical evidence pointed toward a more sinister course of events - that Rodriguez raped and severely beat Baldwin, who was still alive when he put her in the suitcase in which she suffocated to death.

    Rodriguez also admitted to killing 16-year-old Joanna Rogers, who was also found in a landfill, stuffed in a suitcase, saying he also killed her in self defense.

    Rogers was reported missing about a year before Baldwin’s killing and prosecutors offered Rodriguez a life sentence if he helped find her.

    “The fact that we were able to find Joanna is a big deal,” Powell said. “You know it’s horrible enough to lose a child, much less, lose a child and not knowing where that child is. So that was a big deal to be able to find her and bring her home to her parents.”

    Roger’s father, Joe Bill Rogers, said Rodriguez’s execution was 15 years in the making and helps end his family’s tragic journey.

    “It’s over. I don’t want anything else to do with it,” he said in a brief news conference after witnessing the execution.

    Rodriguez would back out of the plea deal, allowing prosecutors to seek the death penalty at trial for Baldwin’s killing. However, because Rodriguez’s admission in Roger’s killing came as part of a voided plea deal it could not be used during the trial. However, prosecutors called on five women who told jurors Rodriguez raped them.

    Powell described Rodriguez as “pure evil” and deserving of his death sentence.

    “This is a guy that, left unchecked, he’d hurt somebody else again,” he said. “He would terrorize somebody else again. There’s no doubt in my mind that if the circumstances were presented again where he could hurt a guard or hurt another inmate or hurt a teacher or nurse or whoever he could come in contact with, I think given the right set of circumstances he would hurt them again, no doubt.”

    Rodriguez’s statements accusing Powell and Natarajan of criminal wrongdoing stems from a 2015 whistle-blower lawsuit Natarajan’s former employee filed complaining of mismanagement. The lawsuit was used as grounds for last-minute court filings to halt the execution.

    Seth Kretzer, Rodriguez’s appellate attorney of five years, said he is disappointed with the execution but said the appeals citing the lawsuit was not an accusation of criminal wrongdoing against Powell and Natarajan.

    “All we said was that, at the most, we should have been allowed to see he was engaged in the same stuff he settled there,” he said. “I don’t do screeds, I don’t accuse anyone of criminal conduct, or racial motivation unless I have some actual evidence of some criminal conduct or racial motivation.”

    He said he doubts anything will come from Rodriguez’s last statements and expressed sympathy for Rodriguez’s family and for Baldwin’s and Rogers’ families.

    “I would personally be very surprised if any law enforcement agency even cared what he said in the end, much less do anything with it,” he said. “We did everything we could legally for Mr. Rodriguez we are grieved by the outcome. As far as I’m concerned the legal work with my firm is now concluded.”

    Two men remain on death row after being sentenced to death by jurors in Lubbock.

    Joe Franco Garza is awaiting the results of post-conviction DNA testing, which postponed his 2015 execution for the 1998 slaying of Silbiano Rangel, whom he strangled to death during a robbery.

    Brian Suniga is in the midst of appealing his 2014 conviction and death sentence for the 2011 killing of David Rowser during an armed robbery at the One Guy From Italy Restaurant on 50th Street.

    http://www.lubbockonline.com/news/20...ows-his-nature
    "I realize this may sound harsh, but as a father and former lawman, I really don't care if it's by lethal injection, by the electric chair, firing squad, hanging, the guillotine or being fed to the lions."
    - Oklahoma Rep. Mike Christian

    "There are some people who just do not deserve to live,"
    - Rev. Richard Hawke

    “There are lots of extremely smug and self-satisfied people in what would be deemed lower down in society, who also deserve to be pulled up. In a proper free society, you should be allowed to make jokes about absolutely anything.”
    - Rowan Atkinson

  3. #53
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Fifth Circuit Chastises Two Texas Attorneys For Filing Last-Minute Death Penalty Stay

    By John Council
    Texas Lawyer

    The U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit has chastised two Texas attorneys in connection with a last-minute effort to stay the execution of a death row client, though it stopped short of sanctioning them.

    Seth Kretzer and Carlo D’Angelo represented Rosendo Rodriguez III, who was convicted of capital murder and sentenced to death in 2009 for the murder of Summer Baldwin, a pregnant prostitute he killed and stuffed in a suitcase.

    After years of unsuccessful appeals, the attorneys filed another writ of habeas corpus a week ahead of Rodriguez’s March 27 execution date, alleging they found newly discovered evidence that questioned the credibility of Lubbock County Medical Examiner Dr. Sridhar Natarajan, who performed the autopsy on Baldwin’s body.

    The writ alleged that the lawyers had become aware on Feb. 16 of a 2015 wrongful termination suit filed against Natarajan by Dr. Luisa Florez, who claimed that Natarajan was not performing his own autopsies but was delegating those duties to technicians who were not trained doctors. The writ also alleged that Natarajan and Lubbock County settled that lawsuit, and paid Florez $230,000, on Nov. 7, 2017.

    The Fifth Circuit denied the writ, and Rodriguez was executed as scheduled March 27. Two days day later, according to the decision, the Fifth Circuit issued a show cause order against Kretzer and D’Angelo, directing them to explain why they shouldn’t be sanctioned for filing the successive writ.

    The Fifth Circuit asked the attorneys to explain two things: When did they first became aware of the 2015 lawsuit that Dr. Florez settled in 2017, and why their writ did not mention the Feb. 26 eyewitness affidavit, filed by prosecutors in Rodriguez’s criminal matter, of former Lubbock County homicide investigator Garland Timms, who swore he personally witnessed the autopsy of Baldwin performed by Natarajan.

    In their response, according to the court, the attorneys explained they knew nothing about the Florez suit until February 2018, because the case was only disclosed in a handful of Lubbock media outlets.

    As for Timms’ affidavit, which was created 12 years after the autopsy occurred, they noted they had no opportunity to cross-examine Timms about his statement.

    Those answers did not completely satisfy the Fifth Circuit panel, but the court ultimately decided against sanctioning the attorneys.

    “As to the first question, counsel claimed their client, now executed, informed them about the lawsuit filed by Dr. Florez in February 2018, which precipitated their filings,” the Fifth Circuit panel wrote in per curiam opinion. “Counsel nevertheless failed directly to answer the second question, and instead asserted unpersuasive, post-hoc arguments as to why this court should have discredited the affidavit.”

    “After reviewing counsels’ submissions carefully, we do not impose sanctions, but we chastise habeas counsel for failing to even acknowledge, much less attempt, to rebut an affidavit timely offered by the state that on its face contradicted the factual basis for the last minute successive petition,” the court wrote.

    “This court takes very seriously its duty to review all petitions on behalf of petitioners facing execution. Our task is made all the more difficult when counsel, having already pressed against an impending execution date, simply ignore the facts brought to bear by the state that undermine their newly discovered theories,” the court wrote. “There is no excuse for such delays.”

    “This bespeaks lack of candor to the court and arguably lack of a good-faith basis for the positions they espoused,” the court concluded. “However, attorneys Seth Kretzer and Carlo D’Angelo are admonished that their pleadings and filings in future cases will be scrutinized for accuracy, completeness and compliance with Rule 11,” which allows courts to sanction attorney for filing pleadings that have no evidentiary support.

    The panel that admonished the attorneys consisted of Fifth Circuit Judges Edith Jones and Jerry Smith. Judge James Dennis also sat on the panel but declined to participate in the lawyers’ admonishment.

    Kretzer, a Houston attorney who frequently litigates criminal appeals before the Fifth Circuit, said he was happy to answer the Fifth Circuit’s questions and welcomes their scrutiny.

    “Obviously, we have nothing but the greatest respect and deference for all of the judges on the Fifth Circuit,’’ Kretzer said.

    “I welcome any scrutinization of my work for completeness and accuracy,” added Kretzer, noting that he and his co-counsel hired Thomas C. Wright, a Houston attorney who defends attorneys in professional responsibility cases, to answer the Fifth Circuit show cause order.

    “I hired an outside counsel to check our work. If I felt I had done anything wrong, I would have said so,’’ Kretzer said.

    D’Angelo, a Tyler attorney, and Wright, both did not return calls for comment.

    https://www.law.com/texaslawyer/2018...-penalty-stay/

  4. #54
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    Related. Slightly edited.

    Father of murdered Lubbock teen loses battle to cancer

    LUBBOCK, TX (KCBD) - We first met Joe Bill and Kathy Rogers when their 16-year-old daughter disappeared from their Lubbock home in 2004. For years, search parties spread out across the county looking for any sign of Joanna.

    In 2006, Rosendo Rodriguez confessed to killing Joanna, putting her body in a suitcase and throwing it in a dumpster. It is the same way he said he killed Summer Baldwin.

    Search teams dug through piles of garbage at the Lubbock landfill looking for the suitcase. After two months, they found it; Joanna's body was still inside.

    The Rogers could finally bury their daughter, but the journey was far from over.

    Rodriguez's execution was scheduled for March 27, 2018.

    We sat down with Kathy and Joe Bill just days before Rodriguez's execution date where we learned the Rogers were facing another battle. In September 2016, doctors diagnosed Joe Bill with Merkel cell carcinoma.

    Joe Bill said the rare cancer developed just a little more than a year after a successful lung transplant.

    "I've been getting more mileage out of this old body than I thought I would. I've got a new set of lungs. The lung chemo-therapy gave me the Merkel cell, so I don't know what is next," Joe Bill told us in March.

    At the time of that interview, Joe Bill had started chemotherapy and was not sure he would be strong enough to make the trip to Huntsville.

    He told us he would be content with Rodriguez spending a lifetime behind bars, but he was not opposed to the death penalty.

    "I kind of like the idea of outliving him," Joe Bill said.

    On March 27, the Rogers' son, pushed Joe Bill's wheelchair into the Huntsville Unit.

    We stood in the witness room behind Joe Bill as he watched his daughter's killer receive a lethal injection.

    After returning home, the trips to the hospital continued.

    He spent his 71st birthday in a hospital room surrounded by loved ones.

    On Thursday, he returned home where he began hospice care with his wife by his side.

    About 24 hours later, on June 15, Kathy said Joe Bill passed away peacefully.

    http://m.kcbd.com/kcbd/db_331352/con...tguid=HcCOcl4U
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    "They will hurt you. They will hurt your grandma, these people. The root cause of this is there's no discipline in the homes, they don't go to school, you know, they live off the government, no personal accountability, and they just beat people up for no reason, and it's disgusting." - Former Hamilton County Prosecutor Joe Deters

  5. #55
    Senior Member CnCP Legend Mike's Avatar
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    Glad that this guy got to outlive Rosendo. We see far to many parents that die long before the killers do.

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