Luis V. Rodriguez was arrested, tried, convicted, and sentenced to die in the California Gas Chamber at San Quentin Prison, for crimes he did not commit, (the killing of two lawmen in Yolo County California).
Before his arrest at age twenty three, Luis Valenzuela Rodriguez spent much of his time helping others and promoting social change.
Now he has every right to be angry; he trusted the United States Criminal Justice System to establish his innocence, and it did not do so.
Illegal, irresponsible, unethical, biased, and sloppy investigation procedures were used to manufacture this criminal case around him and to acquire his conviction and death sentence. The chief prosecution witness against Rodriguez was mentally unreliable and known to have lied numerous times to police and while testifying under oath at Rodriguez´ preliminary hearing and trial.
Yet, the prosecution not only provided her with healthy incentives to lie continuously, but provided her with continuing protections from full exposure and rewards. Margaret Alice Judith Klaess, as the prosecutionâs key witness, was also provided immunity from prosecution for numerous crimes including the charges of murdering the two lawmen. Other false witnesses with criminal records, as well as drug addicts, quickly appeared offering false statements against Rodriguez for immunities and other police and prosecutorial rewards.

Luis was also convicted as the result of egregious jury misconduct, evidence which had been tainted and which was contradictory and unreliable, as well as due to the result of the prosecutionâs suppressed and destroyed evidence which would have proved favorable for Rodriguez in his defense. Several prosecution witnesses had been hypnotized prior to testifying or providing any statement to police, and this practice of hypnosis was later ruled illegal in another death penalty case, but in Rodriguez´ case, it was overlooked. Rodriguez, half Native American Indian (Apache) and half Spanish (Mexican), has been imprisoned since 1978. He has been subjected to severe physical and psychological mistreatment prior to his trial while confined within the county jails and since his confinement in prison, all for crimes he did not commit.

After more than a decade on Death Row, his death sentence was reversed and he has since been resentenced to Life Without the Possibility of Parole and confined to the notorious Pelican Bay State Prison on California. (Pelican Bay Prison is located in the northern corner of California and the extreme distance had made it almost impossible for Luis to receive visits from family and friends, or even his attorneys.)  Luis was initially sent directly to the Pelican Bay Prison SHU Control Unit, (which is an isolation-sensory deprivation disciplinary housing unit). He was sent there by prison officials and the stateâs Attorney General in an act of retaliation for his success in overturning his death sentence, winning a new trial order, and then being resentenced to Life (Rodriguez was not given the new trial ordered by the original trial judge who ruled that Rodriguez had not been provided a fair trial and that violations of such right occurred in several respects). Additionally, this retaliation was taken as a result of Rodriguez` political activities, filing of civil action on his own behalf and on the behalf of other prisoners, and for his collaborations with the news media to expose his innocence in the crimes for which he has been convicted, and to expose the corruption of the prison system and prison officials.

Early Life

Luis V. Rodriguez was raised in an atmosphere of political and social involvement. As a youngster, he lived in Los Angeles for a period of time with a group known as the Brown Berets, a Chicano-Native American militant organization, which formed against racism and other social injustices.
Luis grew up in the times of the Vietnam war and it`s consequent demonstrations which resulted in the Watts Rebellion, and the 1970 Whittier Boulevard Rebellion after the police killed political activist and journalist, Ruben Salazar, and at which rebellion Rodriguez was a part of.
Luis« politically active father and his contact with the Brown Berets helped Luis to place these events into proper perspective and to bring about his political and social awareness. He also interacted with the League of United Latin Americans (LULAC), the G.I. Forum, and other sociopolitical organizations.
Rodriguez worked diligently to help himself and others. At age seventeen, he started Atzlan, a Chicano-Native American news magazine, which focused on politics, history, culture, and ethnic awareness. He was editor-in-chief, artist, and headed a small staff of other youths. He was a counselor at an Offender Ex-Offender program in Sacramento, a counselor in Los Angeles at the AYUDATE program, and a counselors` aide at the California Youth Authority Perkins Reception Center. his goal was to become a California Youth Authority counselor, a parole or probation officer, or an attorney, in order to help young people. Until the erroneous conviction in 1981 for the two homicides, he had never been convicted of a felony (People V. Rodriguez, 1991).