RODRIGUEZ WAS NOT PROVIDED A FAIR TRIAL

Luis V. Rodriguez was not provided a fair trial in 1980-81. The reasons are straight obvious in the numerous instances of police and prosecution misconduct: false testimony extracted through psychological coerce; offerings of immunity deals and police protection, as well as financial rewards; admission of evidence by the prosecution which was tainted, unreliable, and contradictory; police destruction of crime scene evidence which would have had a favorable impact in exculpating Rodriguez from these crimes; police and prosecutors knowingly manufactured perjurious testimonies against Rodriguez; the failure of police and prosecutors to investigate other possible suspects for the crimes; the hypnosis of witnesses who were unreliable; the with-holding of evidence; egregious jury misconduct.

The prosecution at trial alleged that according to Margaret Klaess, she and Rodriguez were traveling from the San Francisco area at approximately 3:30 a.m. when they were pulled over by the two Highway Patrol Officers.
According to Klaess, Rodriguez got out of the car, fought with both officers and somehow managed to handcuff one of the officers and subsequently shooting both of the officers. Margaret Klaessâ testimony was a complete fallacy at best and could be irrefutably disproven on numerous key issues; Klaess testified that Rodriguez single -handedly fought with both officers, gaining control over their service revolvers. leaving them bruised, scraped, and muddied over their entire bodies. Yet, Rodriguez weighed approximately 145 pounds at the time and had a metal plate in his shoulder from an old car accident which he had recently reinjured in 1978 while working for the Post Office, forcing him to leave on disability. When arrested, Rodriguez did not have any scratches, bruises, cuts or scrapes on any part of his body (remembering that Rodriguez was arrested within 48 hours of the alleged crimes, and that both officers were approximately six feet tall, weighing over two hundred pounds, each. Both where athletic, robust, and veteran officers on the force for over ten years. Freeman especially was known to have a propensity for violent, excessive use of force against citizens). It truly is unbelievable that Rodriguez could have accomplished this alleged feat. All of Rodriguezâ clothes were presented at trial, none of which had any tears, mud, nor any other evidence that might suggest a struggle in which two strong, highly trained police officers where killed.

Klaess testified that while committing these crimes, Rodriguez returned to the open car door (in which she sat while Rodriguez was supposedly fighting with the officers) and he did not have any weapons in his hands. This is totally inconsistent and unbelievable in light of other circumstances of the crime which she described, such as that after a few minutes when Rodriguez left the car, she initially heard only one gun shot and then Rodriguez again returned to the car ´empty-handed´, and that Rodriguez then returned to the location of the officers, returned a third time where she observed two large handguns in his hands which were silver in color.
This scenario and sequence of events are unbelievable when examined and the questions asked, ´If only one shot was initially fired and Rodriguez returned to the car without any weapon, where were the officer´s revolvers (Officer Blecher had one service revolver, Officer Freeman had two revolvers, his service revolver as well as another hidden revolver in his ankle-holster which he had not received the proper authorization to carry)`?
Additionally, there was a .22 caliber revolver found at the crime scene (the source of which is still unknown), as well as the police officer´s shotgun which was located within the police vehicle. During the supposed three trips Rodriguez was said to have made back and forth from the vehicle to the crime scene with no weapons in his hand, why couldnât one or both officers escape or gain access to one of the various weapons at the scene?

Margaret Klaess testified that she and Rodriguez slid down a muddy embankment on their rear-ends while escaping from the crime scene. Yet Rodriguez´ pants and shoes showed no signs of grass or mud stains, and as testified by an expert witness, his clothing appeared to have only dirt on the shoes and pants that a normally worn pair would have without any grass stains (curiously enough, most of Margaretâs clothing was left unaccounted for and never recovered, including her purse, and her boots which showed evidence of having been thoroughly washed).
According to Klaess, they were running and hiding from a police helicopter. Irrefutable evidence was presented that there were no helicopters employed on that morning, and at the general time of the murders due to heavy fog conditions.
Klaess claimed never to have seen a pair of the officer s handcuffs, however, a pair of the officer´s handcuffs were missing from the crime scene. According to Klaess, Rodriguez gave her the guns to put into her purse until they were discarded, yet she said she never saw the handcuffs. The handcuffs were found soon after their arrest in a location that was in a totally opposite direction of that which Klaess had claimed was the direction she and Rodriguez had fled.

Klaess also claimed that she hadn´t smoked or used PCP since age fifteen, but there were plenty of witnesses who could have contradicted that and provided testimony that she had used the drug only months prior to the crimes, including her own admission to have used PCP as recently as March 1978.  It was on this basis that the judge refused to order that Margaret Klaess undergo psychiatric examination. The prosecutors knew that this was a false statement made by Klaess yet they did not inform the judge that Margaret was continuing to receive psychiatric care. Klaess also admitted that she was continuing to suffer periodic hallucinations in which she believed or saw certain things which were not true in reality just months prior to the homicides.

Rodriguez testified that he was not with Klaess at the time of the crimes and that the two of them had parted after reaching Sacramento at approximately 2:30 a.m. after they had argued. Klaess wanted to find more drugs and left alone in the car the two had been driving, a dark brown 1977 Chevy Camaro. Five independent motorists, passing the crime scene at the time of the homicides reported to police that they saw a car, other than the police vehicle, of a completely different make, model, and color of the one Rodriguez and Klaess were supposed to have been driving.
The motorists testified that they each saw a light colored, compact, older model with a square shape. One motorist specifically described the car as a white, 1968 Ford Galaxy. Rodriguez had been driving a dark brown, 1977 Chevy Camaro which was not a square shaped car.

Rodriguez testified that he and Klaess had departed from the San Francisco bay area at approximately 1:30 a.m. that morning and had reached their motel room in west Sacramento by 3:00 a.m., soon after, he and Margaret parted company and she left driving the brown Camaro. one of Rodriguez´ strongest supporting witnesses who would have had collaborated the fact that Rodriguez was in west Sacramento long before the alleged homicides and would have disproven Klaess´ version of the events, was an independent witness who observed the brown Camaro parked in west Sacramento between 2:30 a.m.- 3:30 a.m.. However, this witness was found murdered under a bridge before he could testify in Rodriguez´ behalf. Margaret testified that they left from the San Francisco bay area at approximately 2:30 a.m. were stopped by the officers prior to their reaching west Sacramento.

Another prosecution witness, Jerri Engle, had originally contacted the police by telephone, informing them that Rodriguez and Klaess had departed from her home in the bay area at approximately 1:30 a.m., thereby confirming Rodriguez´ version that he was in Sacramento long before the crimes took place. (The drive from the bay area to west Sacramento had been estimated to take approximately one hour.) However, Jerri Engle was spoken to at various times thereafter by the homicide investigators, Engle changed her estimate to say that Rodriguez and Klaess left her home at approximately 2:30 a.m. in an attempt to place Rodriguez in the vicinity of the crimes and within the time frame of when the homicides occurred. This would not be the only time that the investigators of Yolo County would coerce witnesses to change the facts to fit more with how the prosecutors and police would like, and to support such perjury. In fact, tape recordings of such manipulations, false statements, testimonies, and identifications exist, which clearly prove the blatant misconduct and malfeasance of the investigators in coercing, manufacturing, and creating untrue statements for witnesses which would be utilized during Rodriguez´ trial. There is also a tape recorded, pretrial prepatory interview between Klaess, the investigators, and the Yolo County District attorneys, in which Klaess was caught in various blatant lies and these officials did nothing more than create excuses and false statements for her to utilize when she would be crossed-examined by Rodriguezâ attorney during the trial.

An example of one of the false excuses created by the prosecutors for Klaess, was during one of the pretrial prepatory interviews that Klaess had with the Yolo County District Attorney, Richard Gilbert, the Assistant District Attorney, and two of the homicide investigators in mid-1979, (this interview was tape-recorded by the District Attorney, and is now in Rodriguez´ possession). During the interview, the District Attorney again asked Margaret about the .22 cal. revolver that was found at the crime scene. Klaess, this time stated that the gun found at the crime scene belonged to a man by the name of Robert Sanchez. The District Attorney quickly reminded Klaess that that was not what she had told them before and again asked her if the previous story she had told was true. Klaess stated, "Yeah, I suppose so". They then asked her to repeat the previous story about the gun. She had previously told them that Rodriguez had bought a .22 cal. revolver from some unknown transient who was hitch-hiking outside of Toreyâs Restaurant in west Sacramento a week or so prior to the homicides. Robert Sanchez was an acquaintance of Klaess, who she had lived with briefly in November, 1978. Sanchez was a known drug dealer of PCP, cocaine, and various other drugs, and known as a person prone to violence, (a few weeks after Rodriguez´ arrest, Robert Sanchez shot another man in the face with a sawed-off shotgun). In response to Klaess´ slip that the gun was Sanchez´, the District Attorney quickly made up a story for Klaess to use to cover-up her lie, that perhaps she was confused because, "maybe Rodriguez had purchased or traded another gun to Sanchez and that´s why she was confused".

Margaret quickly adopted that story as her own.
Klaess was a shrewd, street-wise woman, having grown up on the streets and involved in drugs and prostitution . She knew very well how to manipulate and lie to get whatever she wanted. She wanted her freedom and revenge against Rodriguez, and would play along with whatever the District attorney or police wanted her to say.
Margaret Klaess had also been involved with members of an Aryan Brothers street gang in various robberies related to drugs. Margaret would prostitute herself in order to get close to a drug dealer as, where she would then show the Aryan gang members to the location, showing them where the drugs and money were kept. The gang members would tie-up the drug dealer at gun point and take the drugs, money, and as much property as they could carry. These robberies took place in October and November, 1978 while Klaess was estranged from Rodriguez, (Luis was living in the Bay Area and Margaret was living with the Aryan group in Sacramento). Two of the gang members were executed by drug dealers, shot, tied-up, and set on fire in the trunk of a car on November 17, 1978.

Another example of how investigators created false witnesses and testimony against Rodriguez is found on one of their own tape-recorded conversations with a man who they believed to be a victim witness in an extortion plot, in which Klaess was claiming that Rodriguez had master-minded.
These investigators had this man believing that it was Rodriguez who secretly photographed him having sex with minors, (the man was a psychologist for a high school). Throughout the entire telephone conversation, the investigator kept telling the man, "We know that Rodriguez killed those officers, and we know that Margaret did not do it, she was just there. She told us that it was Rodriguez who orchestrated this extortion plot against you and that it was him who took the pictures of you. It was Rodriguez, right?" The psychologist would say, "yeah, I guess it was Rodriguez". The one thing that completely destroyed the investigators efforts to place more crimes on Rodriguez was when the man said, "Yeah, it was Rodriguez. He´s black, isn´t he?" Rodriguez is not black, and that destroyed their efforts.  Obviously, this was exactly how the investigators manufactured the false case around Rodriguez, this conversation just happened to be recorded. The investigation process was not fair, unbiased, or impartial, but was a blatant, illegal process aimed at gaining a conviction against Rodriguez at any costs.

In 1979, Robert Sanchez confided in a social worker that he wanted to confess that the gun found at the crime scene of the murders of the two C.H.P. officers belonged to him. The social worker reported this to police, but they continued to refuse to investigate Sanchez as a suspect because it would destroy the case they had built around Rodriguez. Additionally, Robert Sanchez owned a White, 1968 Ford Galaxy, the same type of car seen by motorists passing the crime scene at the time of the murders. In 1988, another witness came forward to state that in 1979, Sanchez had sold him a .38 cal. revolver which looked like a lawmanâs gun and when the person asked Sanchez where he got the gun, Sanchez told him he got if from a California Highway Patrolman.