Rosendo Rodriguez execution: ‘Suitcase killer’ put to death in Texas

ROSENDO Rodriguez took 22 minutes to die after being injected with a fatal drug cocktail. The convicted killer remained defiant until the end.

Rosendo Rodriguez III was condemned to death for the 2005 killing of 29-year-old Summer Baldwin. Picture: Texas Department of Criminal Justice/AP

ROSENDO Rodriguez III celebrated his 38th birthday yesterday.

Today, Rodriguez is dead.

The man known as the Suitcase killer was put to death after being given a lethal dose of the powerful sedative pentobarbital, injected by Texas prison officials.

He was pronounced dead 22 minutes later bringing the number of state executions this year to four.

The execution came despite lawyers making a last-minute appeal to the United States Supreme Court to halt the execution.

Asked if he had a final statement, Rodriguez spoke defiantly for seven minutes but never apologised to relatives of his victims watching through a window.

“The state may have my body but they never had my soul,” Rodriguez said.

He also urged people to boycott Texas businesses to pressure the state into ending the death penalty and reiterated issues raised in late appeals that were rejected by the courts.

“I’ve fought the good fight, I have run the good race,” he said. “Warden, I’m ready to join my father.”

Less than 30 minutes before Rodriguez was taken to the death chamber, the US Supreme Court rejected an appeal to block his punishment.

Rodriguez’s lawyers told the justices lower courts improperly turned down appeals that focused on the medical examiner’s testimony at Rodriguez’s trial for the September 2005 slaying of Summer Baldwin.

State lawyers said the high court appeal was improper, untimely and meritless, and “nothing more than a last-ditch effort,” according to Texas Assistant Attorney-General, Tomee Heining.

HORROR CRIME

Rodriguez was convicted to death over the brutal killing of Ms Baldwin, 29, in Lubbock whose battered, naked body was stuffed into a new piece of luggage and tossed in the garbage.

Workers at the city landfill in September 2005 spotted and then opened the suitcase, discovering the corpse of Ms Baldwin, who was 10 weeks pregnant.

Texas has executed four people so far this year. Picture: Paul Buck/AFP

Detectives used a barcode label sewn to the luggage to establish it was purchased a day earlier at a Walmart, and debit card records and store surveillance video identified the buyer as Rodriguez, a Marine reservist from San Antonio who had been in Lubbock for training that included martial arts combat.

He was convicted and sentenced to die for raping and killing Ms Baldwin.

Court records show Rodriguez was also linked to at least five other sexual assaults.

He also confessed to killing Joanna Rogers, a 16-year-old who was missing for a year when her mummified remains were found inside a suitcase at the city garbage dump.

‘GOOD AT KILLING’

Rodriguez lived in San Antonio with his parents and was arrested three days after Ms Baldwin’s body was discovered.

Three weeks later, he gave Lubbock police a statement saying he killed her in self-defence when she pulled a knife on him after the two had consensual sex on September 12, 2005, at a hotel room.

Testimony at his 2008 trial showed Ms Baldwin had about 50 blunt force wounds and may have been alive when she was folded into the suitcase and tossed into a bin.

The contents subsequently wound up at the city dump.

Jurors who convicted Rodriguez of capital murder heard from five women, including his high school girlfriend, who testified he raped them.

Jurors also heard about his confession to killing Ms Rogers, who he initially met in an online chat room.

“He’s really good at killing people,” Lubbock County District Attorney Matt Powell, who prosecuted Rodriguez, said. “Very calm, very calculated.

“Women were terrified of him. He used his charm and good looks and status for a long time to victimise women. In this case, the right guy is getting the appropriate punishment.”

DEFIANT FIGHT

Rodriguez’s lawyers said lower courts improperly turned down appeals that focused on the medical examiner’s trial testimony about Ms Baldwin’s autopsy and her injuries.

In a filing on Monday to the Supreme Court, lawyer Seth Kretzer said the justices were his “last hope” to show Rodriguez was innocent and get a hearing related to a recent disclosure of the settlement of a whistleblower legal case — which lawyers argued previously was unknown to them — that alleged the coroner delegated some duties to unqualified underlings.

That practice raised questions about “the credibility and admissibility of the medical examiner’s testimony in this case,” Mr Kretzer said.

Assistant Texas Attorney-General Tomee Heining said the high court appeal was improper, untimely and meritless, and “nothing more than a last-ditch effort” to undermine scientific findings that were unfavourable for Rodriguez.

The case involved a dismissed former employee who didn’t start work until years after Rodriguez went to trial.

The settlement included a statement that there was no reason to question the scientific validity of findings or opinions made by the medical examiner’s office, according to prosecutors. Court records showed the medical examiner personally conducted Ms Baldwin’s autopsy. Records also described the mother of four as a prostitute.

— with news.com.au