United States v. Rodriguez

56 M.J. 336, 2002 CAAF LEXIS 233, 2002 WL 390056
CourtCourt of Appeals for the Armed Forces
DecidedMarch 13, 2002
Docket01-0130/AR
StatusPublished
Cited by16 cases

This text of 56 M.J. 336 (United States v. Rodriguez) is published on Counsel Stack Legal Research, covering Court of Appeals for the Armed Forces primary law. Counsel Stack provides free access to over 12 million legal documents including statutes, case law, regulations, and constitutions.

Bluebook
United States v. Rodriguez, 56 M.J. 336, 2002 CAAF LEXIS 233, 2002 WL 390056 (Ark. 2002).

Opinions

Judge EFFRON

delivered the opinion of the Court.

A general court-martial composed of officer and enlisted members convicted appellant, contrary to his pleas, of murder while engaging in an act inherently dangerous to another, in violation of Article 118, Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), 10 USC § 918. He was sentenced to a dishonorable discharge, confinement for thirty years, total forfeitures, and reduction to the lowest enlisted grade. The convening authority approved the adjudged sentence, waived the forfeitures for a period of six months, and provided appellant with 151 days of confinement credit. The Army Court of Criminal Appeals affirmed the findings and the sentence in an unpublished opinion.

On appellant’s petition, we granted review of the following issue:

WHETHER THE MILITARY JUDGE ERRED BY ADMITTING CERTAIN PORTIONS OF APPELLANT’S ADMISSIONS TO THE POLICE WHILE DISALLOWING OTHER PORTIONS.

We affirm for the reasons set forth below.

I. Background

A. Appellant’s Seven Statements

Appellant’s wife, Angela, died on January 3, 1998. The autopsy report indicated that her death resulted from suffocation due to a choke hold. Appellant did not contact anyone concerning his wife until two days later, on January 5, when he called his mother-in-law from a pay phone. In the first of seven statements he would make over a three-day period, appellant told his mother-in-law that he and Angela had been abducted. He added that he had been hit over the head, which rendered him unconscious. He also told his mother-in-law that he did not know where his wife was, and that she had been bound and gagged in a car the last time he saw her.

After speaking with his mother-in-law, appellant made a “911” telephone call for emergency assistance. During the 911 call, appel[338]*338lant made his second statement during the following exchange with the 911 dispatcher:

Q: Police, may I help you?
A: Yes, my name is Jose.
Q: Yes.
A: And right now I don’t know where I’m in — me and my wife were burglarized at home.
Q: What happened now?
A: All I could remember is that me and my wife, we got home and my house was burglarized or whatever because I got knocked out.
Q: Somebody came to your house?
A: I’m not even at the house. I’m somewhere — I don’t even know where I’m at.
Q: I know where you are, but somebody came to your house?
A: I don’t know, it seemed like two or three people — I don’t know. This happened a while ago. This happened in the evening time—
Q: Wait, wait. Will you speak into the phone? I can hardly hear you.
A: I don’t know if this happened before or what. I mean like tonight or the night before that. I don’t even know what time it is or nothing like that.
Q: You were passed out?
A: I got knocked out, my head hurts.
* * *
Q: So, you regained consciousness just now?
A: I’ve been on and off. I just walked about — I don’t know how long I walked to get a phone.

When officers from the Honolulu Police Department responded to appellant’s 911 call, he made a third statement, which generally repeated the information in his call to the 911 dispatcher.

Later during the morning of January 5, appellant made his fourth statement during a formal interview with Honolulu police detective Philip Camaro from the Missing Persons/Homieide Unit. At this point, the body of appellant’s wife had not yet been discovered and Detective Camaro was investigating Angela’s disappearance as a missing person case. Detective Camaro testified that during this interview, appellant stated that

two males attacked him and that ... his head was covered with a bag and he was tied up and that as a result of the attack he was — found himself slipping in and out of a state of unconsciousness.
i*: jj: %
The next thing he recalls is he’s in some car still bodnd, still with a bag over his head and the vehicle had stopped. It was dark. The males then removed him from the car. During this process he was able to kick one of the males and force himself free and as he was running away he was still — he had loosened his bounds [sic] while in the car but he was able to loosen the rope and he was able to hop away and then eventually remove the rope and remove the bag. Mr. Rodriguez also claimed that as he was fleeing or escaping he heard two or three shots fired in his direction.

Appellant told Detective Camaro that the last time he heard from his wife, she was upstairs in their home screaming while under attack by the intruders. Police officers later discovered Angela Rodriguez’s body in the back seat of the Rodriguez family car, which was located approximately one mile from the pay phone where appellant made the 911 call.

By the next day, January 6, the police determined that there were inconsistencies in appellant’s first four statements. In addition, their review of the evidence recovered at appellant’s home indicated that the “burglary” had been staged. As a result, the police conducted an interview of appellant on January 6, when he made his fifth statement.

Later on January 6, appellant made his sixth statement during a custodial interview with Honolulu police detectives Tamashiro and Wiese. In this statement, he confessed to killing his wife and fabricating his previous statements to cover up the crime. The interview was taped, and a seventy-three-page transcript was produced. The next day, Jan[339]*339uary 7, Detectives Tamashiro and Wiese conducted another taped, custodial interview, at which appellant made his seventh statement. In this statement, which resulted in a forty-two-page transcript, appellant reiterated his confession.

B. Trial Proceedings

At trial, the prosecution sought to prove the murder charge by asking the panel to draw an inference of guilt from the untruthful nature of appellant’s first four exculpatory statements. The prosecution’s evidence included a tape of appellant’s 911 call, the testimony of his mother-in-law, the testimony of Detective Camaro, and the testimony of Honolulu police officer Eric Zarielo, who responded to appellant’s 911 call. The prosecution also offered expert testimony from Dr. Bani Win, the Honolulu deputy medical examiner, to establish the cause and manner of Angela Rodriguez’s death. Dr. Win, who conducted the autopsy, testified that Angela’s death was due to “suffocation or asphyxia due to some sort of choke hold to the neck.” The Government did not introduce evidence of appellant’s fifth, sixth, or seventh statements as part of its case-in-chief.

The defense sought to convince the panel that the death was the result of an accident during a domestic dispute that escalated into a physical confrontation in which appellant’s wife was the aggressor.

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Cite This Page — Counsel Stack

Bluebook (online)
56 M.J. 336, 2002 CAAF LEXIS 233, 2002 WL 390056, Counsel Stack Legal Research, https://law.counselstack.com/opinion/united-states-v-rodriguez-armfor-2002.