THE JURY

The jury in Rodriguez´ trial declared itself `Hopeless Deadlocked´ a total of six times on the guilt or innocence of Luis in the period of twenty one days of actual deliberations.
It was the first time in California history that a jury had declared itself deadlocked so many times.
It was the first time in capital case history that a jury was deadlocked on guilt or innocence for so many days.

A verdict of guilt was finally reached by the jury but only after two very significant occurrences during deliberations.
First, the prosecutor was allowed to write a very special jury instruction for the judge to read as law to the deadlocked jury towards conviction. The specialized instruction was intentionally designed to discredit crucial defense witness testimonies which amounted to a second closing argument to which Rodriguez´ attorney, (David Weiner of Cameron Park, Ca.) was not allowed to respond to.

The second damaging incident involves what was later termed by the judge to have been ´egregious juror misconduct´. To break the deadlock, a juror conducted his own experimentations which was completely erroneous, the results of which were entirely incorrect. Yet this juror argued Rodriguez´ guilt to the rest of the deadlocked jury for about an hour based on his experiment, becoming a false witness against Rodriguez in the jury room which Rodriguez could not cross-examine nor respond to. The guilt verdict against Rodriguez was then acquired, (Notably throughout the trial, the judge continuously instructed the jury that they were not to consider any evidence except that which was presented in the courtroom. Juror misconduct of this nature is a ´criminal offense´.
Not one juror ever brought this misconduct to the judge´s attention, and of course the juror has never been charged with a violation of any law even though he admitted to the misconduct).

Of utmost importance was the fact that there was not one Mexican, Mestizo, Native American Indian, or Hispanic-Latino on Luis´ jury.
Ten whites, one African-American, and one Philipino sat as his jurors.