Reply #24: More testimony---

[msanthrope]

from the trial of a co-defendant.


SNIP--

At Van Zandt Street, Carty demanded that the men tape up Rodriguez.


Robinson and Gerald Anderson refused, but Williams complied. He then closed Rodriguez in the trunk of Carty's car. At this point, the men were angry because they had obtained little drugs or money in the lick; they believed that Carty had set them up for a kidnaping that they did not want to commit. Hearing the argument, Zebediah Combs, who lived at 6402 Van Zandt Street and did not participate in the lick, came outside and demanded that everybody be quiet.


Carty said to him, "I got my baby. I got my baby." After seeing Rodriguez in the trunk of her car, Combs told Carty to move the car away from the house. Carty refused, and Combs went back inside. Meanwhile, Robinson, Williams, and Gerald Anderson went to make change for the money they had stolen.


When they returned around 3:30 a.m. to 4:00 a.m., Carty was standing partially in the trunk of her car and partially on the ground. Rodriguez was face down in the trunk, and Carty had placed a plastic bag over her head. Robinson ran up and pushed Carty away, but he could see that Rodriguez had stopped breathing. Robinson ripped the bag while attempting to remove it from Rodriguez's head. When Robinson confronted Carty about why she had killed Rodriguez, Carty replied that it was her baby, her husband's baby.


During the police investigation of the burglary and kidnaping, a tenant in Carty's apartment complex, Florence Meyers, told police about an encounter with Carty the day before that was suspicious. On the evening of May 15, Meyers saw Carty sitting in the Pontiac Sunfire in the parking lot of the apartment complex. Carty told Meyers that she was pregnant and that the baby was going to be born the next day. There was an infant's car seat in the back seat of Carty's car. To Meyers, Carty did not appear to be pregnant. Meyers's statement caused the police to suspect Carty had committed the kidnaping.


After taking Meyers's statement, the police called Carty at around 9 a.m. on May 16 and pretended to respond to a complaint she had filed a few days earlier. She agreed to meet them. At the time of the call, Carty was in a car with Robinson and the baby. Robinson drove Carty to meet the police, and she agreed to go with them to a police station. When Carty did not return from the meeting, Robinson went back to Van Zandt Street with the baby.


Upon arriving at the police station, Carty told the police that she was a confidential Drug Enforcement Agency ("DEA") informant, and asked to speak with her DEA agent, Charlie Mathis. A few days before the kidnaping and murder, Carty had called Mathis and told him about being pregnant. The police then asked Mathis to help them find out what Carty knew about Rodriguez and the missing baby. Mathis told Carty she was in a lot of trouble and advised her to help the police.


Read more: http://vlex.com/vid/68567240#ixzz0gt7hrfs4


Interestingly, people wonder why the defense did not call DEAgent Mathis to the stand during the penalty phase.....the answer should be evident.