A woman who was convicted of murder and sentenced to death two decades ago for poisoning her new husband with antifreeze-spiked Gatorade at their Montebello home in an effort to collect $250,000 in life insurance has been re-sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.
Court papers reviewed by City News Service show that the Los Angeles County District Attorney’s Office declined to re-seek the death penalty against Angelina Rodriguez and conceded that a legitimate claim had been made that she was entitled to relief under the grounds that she received ineffective assistance from her trial attorney during the penalty phase of the high-profile case.
Rodriguez, now 56, was convicted in October 2003 of first-degree murder and sentenced to death in January 2004 for the Sept. 9, 2000, death of her 41-year-old husband, Jose Francisco Rodriguez, whom a prosecutor argued had first been poisoned with oleander and was then finished off with antifreeze-laced Gatorade as she was supposedly nursing him back to health.
Jurors also found true the special circumstance allegations of murder for financial gain and murder by poisoning, along with a separate charge that the defendant tried to dissuade a witness.
Then-Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge William R. Pounders said at Rodriguez’s sentencing that he had never seen “a colder heart” in 20 years on the bench and that she seemed to have no care for the agony she put her husband through in an effort to profit from his death.
The judge noted that Rodriguez attempted to blame her husband’s death on a co-worker.
At her sentencing hearing, Rodriguez maintained that she was innocent of murder.
Reading from a lengthy statement containing frequent religious references, she acknowledged that she had made some mistakes, but said “murder is not on that list.”
Rodriguez said there was “no way” she could have given the amount of poison to her fourth husband that would have been necessary to kill him.
“I don’t have remorse for a murder I didn’t do.” she said.
Rodriguez also maintained then that she “didn’t kill my daughter.”
During the penalty phase of her trial, jurors heard testimony about the September 1993 death of her 13-month-old daughter, who was found with a pacifier nipple in her throat. Rodriguez and her then-husband subsequently settled a wrongful death lawsuit with the pacifier’s manufacturer.
In 2014, the California Supreme Court unanimously upheld Rodriguez’s conviction and death sentence, with then-Associate Justice Ming W. Chin writing on behalf of the panel that there was “ample evidence that defendant murdered her daughter.”
The state’s highest court also rejected the defense’s contention that the trial court judge erred by denying her automatic motion to modify the jury’s recommendation of a death sentence.
The justices also rejected the defense’s claim that jurors should not have heard testimony from witnesses about Rodriguez’s demeanor — described as calm and displaying a lack of emotion — after her husband’s death.
Rodriguez called the life insurance agent the morning of her spouse’s death and asked about getting the $250,000 payment on the life insurance policy she and her husband had taken out on his life in July 2000, shortly after the couple’s April 8, 2000, marriage, the justices noted.
The case was subsequently sent back to Los Angeles County Superior Court for a hearing on her petition, which included a claim that her trial attorney failed to make a motion to suppress evidence seized from her apartment about her daughter’s death when the search warrant was limited to her husband’s death, according to the court papers.
Rodriguez — who was re-sentenced Oct. 31 by Los Angeles County Superior Court Judge James R. Dabney — remains behind bars at Central California Women’s Facility in Chowchilla.