People v. Rodriguez
| Decision Date | 20 February 2014 |
| Docket Number | No. S122123.,S122123. |
| Citation | 168 Cal.Rptr.3d 380,319 P.3d 151,58 Cal.4th 587 |
| Parties | The PEOPLE, Plaintiff and Respondent, v. Angelina RODRIGUEZ, Defendant and Appellant. |
| Court | California Supreme Court |
Karen Kelly, under appointment by the Supreme Court, for Defendant and Appellant.
Kamala D. Harris, Attorney General, Dane R. Gillette, Chief Assistant Attorney General, Lance E. Winters, Assistant Attorney General, Joseph P. Lee and William H. Shin, Deputy Attorneys General, for Plaintiff and Respondent.
A jury convicted defendant Angelina Rodriguez of the first degree murder of her husband, Jose Francisco Rodriguez, under the special circumstances of murder by administering poison and murder for financial gain, and of one count of attempting to dissuade a witness. ( Pen.Code, §§ 136.1, subd. (a)(2), 187, 190.2, subd. (a)(1), (19).)1 The jury was unable to reach a verdict on a charge of soliciting murder, and the court declared a mistrial on that count. After a penalty trial, at which the prosecution presented evidence that defendant had murdered her infant daughter several years previously, the jury returned a verdict of death. The court denied the automatic motion to modify the verdict and imposed that sentence. This appeal is automatic. (§ 1239, subd. (b).) We affirm the judgment.
The evidence showed that in September 2000, on her second attempt, defendant fatally poisoned her husband, Jose Francisco Rodriguez, by giving him drinks containing oleander and antifreeze in order to collect on a life insurance policy she had insisted the two take out a few months earlier. Previously, she had tried to kill him by loosening natural gas valves in their garage. From her jail cell while awaiting trial for the murder, she attempted to dissuade a witness from testifying against her. Evidence was also presented that later she solicited that witness's murder.
Defendant met her future husband, known as "Frank," in February 2000, while they were employed at Angel Gate Academy (Academy) in San Luis Obispo.2 The Academy was a partnership program of the California National Guard and the Los Angeles Unified School District which hosted district students at a camp for a month. Defendant described the Academy to police investigators as a "four week boot type camp for troubled youth."
Frank and defendant were married on April 8. Shortly after the wedding, Frank got a job teaching in the Los Angeles Unified School District, and they moved to Montebello. Defendant's then nine-year-old daughter by a previous marriage, Autumn F. (Autumn), lived with them.
In July, defendant and Frank took out a $250,000 life insurance policy on Frank's life from the Midland National Life Insurance Company. Defendant was named the primary beneficiary. Mickey Marracino, the agent who sold them the policy, testified that defendant had written to him in response to a direct mailing advertisement. He then called her to make an appointment to see them. Marracino met the couple at their home on July 15. Marracino heard Frank ask defendant "why she felt that they needed the insurance" in light of the fact that they were already covered at work and through the National Guard. Defendant explained to Frank the benefits of life insurance and why she felt they needed it. Frank still hesitated, but then told Marracino to "write it up." Frank took the necessary physical examination on July 18, and the policy was approved on July 26. Frank and defendant also discussed insuring defendant's life for $50,000, but that policy was never finalized.
Palmira Gorham, a friend of defendant's during this time, testified that after the marriage, defendant often visited her in Paso Robles without Frank and expressed unhappiness with her marriage. Sometime around mid-June or mid-July, Gorham and defendant had a conversation at Gorham's home in which defendant "was telling me how unhappy she was with Frank." Gorham said jokingly, "Why don't you divorce this one like you divorced all your other ones?" Defendant responded, "No, this one has got [a] life insurance policy," and "[t]hat might be worth my time to do that." She said something like, "If I were to kill him, at least I'd end up with a little bit of money." Later, Gorham's mother joined the conversation, and the two told defendant a story about a woman who had tried to kill her husband by giving him "oleander tea." Gorham did not take the conversation seriously.
A day or so after this conversation, Gorham and her boyfriend spoke with defendant about a dog that had bitten Gorham's son and Gorham's frustration with the police response. At one point, the boyfriend commented that "we could just soak some hot dogs in antifreeze and throw it over the fence." When defendant asked why, Gorham told her "that we had seen something on TV that antifreeze has like kind of a sweet taste and it's really colorful, so it's like bright pink or green, ... and that children and animals, they would drink it without thinking twice."
A couple of weeks later, when defendant was at her home in Montebello, Gorham spoke with her on the telephone. Gorham heard a blender running in the background and asked what defendant was doing. Defendant responded that "she was making Frank a special milkshake." In the past, defendant had told Gorham that Frank liked to have milkshakes when he was ill. So Gorham asked defendant if Frank was sick. She responded, "Not yet."
Loran Moranes was Gorham's nephew, although he was older than she. He got out of jail on July 17 and began a relationship with defendant that became sexual on August 26. Defendant visited him regularly in Paso Robles, beginning while Frank was still alive. Moranes testified that about a week before Frank died, defendant was with him in Paso Robles. She told Moranes that she had "left some kind of gas on in the garage" in Montebello so that Frank "would die." She said that "either there would be some kind of explosion in the house or he would go in there and pass out."
Because he did not want to get involved, Moranes did not tell investigators about this conversation until July 2001, long after defendant's arrest. When the investigators heard of this, they checked records from Southern California Gas Company, the company that serviced defendant's home. The records showed that on September 3, the Sunday of Labor Day weekend, Frank had reported a gas leak at his and defendant's Montebello home. Luis Aguilar, a company service technician, responded to the report and spoke with Frank. Aguilar found two gas leaks in the garage, one behind the clothes dryer and one on the water heater. The valve fitting on the dryer was "very loose," which would not have happened on its own.
On Tuesday, September 5, the day after Labor Day, Frank traveled by bus to the Academy as a chaperone for students from his school who were to participate in the program there. After dropping the students off at the Academy, Frank returned home the same day. He had been a late addition to the group of teachers who accompanied the students, and his name was not placed on the list of teachers who were coming that was given to employees at the Academy.
On Thursday, September 7, Frank, accompanied by defendant, went to the emergency room at Kaiser Hospital in Baldwin Park complaining of vomiting and diarrhea. The treating physician diagnosed the cause as food poisoning. Defendant voiced no suspicion that Frank had been intentionally poisoned. The doctor discharged Frank that afternoon. When he did so, he wrote on a standard instruction sheet that Frank should drink a lot of fluids and, specifically, "drink Gatorade as a re-hydration." Defendant signed the instructions, indicating that she had received them.
At 3:19 a.m. on Saturday, September 9, Montebello Police Officer Stephen Sharpe, responding to a call from defendant's home at 837 Marconi Street, found Frank's body lying facedown on the carpet in the bedroom. He observed blood on the carpet that apparently came from the victim's nose but could detect no apparent cause of death. Defendant identified the man as her husband. Officer Sharpe testified that defendant's crying "seemed rehearsed or kind of forced"; "[a]lthough it was audible, the crying noise, there was a lack of tears, and as soon as I would talk to her, ask her a question, she would immediately kind of snap out of it and answer the questions real quick, and in my experience ... usually someone who just lost their husband, they're very difficult to speak with and communicate to."
The initial autopsy did not reveal the cause of death. The body contained no sign of trauma. Frank was 41 years old when he died and had been in generally good health.
At 10:17 a.m., the morning Frank died, defendant called Marracino, the life insurance agent, and left a message for him to call her back. When he returned her call a short time later, she reported her husband's death and inquired about getting the $250,000 payment on the policy on Frank's life.
Marracino informed her that the company would need an official death certificate showing the cause of death. He also explained that when the death occurs during the first two years after the policy was issued, the company will investigate the claim to determine if it is legitimate. During the conversation, Marracino noticed that defendant spoke without emotion.
Marracino reported Frank's death to the insurance company the same day. He had several other conversations with defendant over the next few weeks in which she repeatedly asked when she would get paid. He kept advising her the company needed a cause of death.
Rebecca Perkins, Frank's sister, who lived in Florida, learned of Frank's death from her mother, Janet...
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