Judge finds no prosecutorial misconduct after capital murder trial ends in mistrial

A Lubbock District judge Thursday begrudgingly granted defense attorneys motion for a mistrial in the non-death penalty capital murder trial for a 56-year old man accused of the 2019 slaying of a 79-year-old Slaton man whose body was found northwest of Abernathy.

The decision to end the trial three days into prosecutors' case in chief against David Wayne Hampton came as a result of multiple potentially prejudicial statements against him were said before jurors by state witnesses without the court's approval.

Hampton, who has been held at the Lubbock County Detention Center since Aug. 15, 2019, is charged with capital murder in the Aug. 3, 2019 slaying of Celestino Rodriguez. The trial began Tuesday after attorneys worked on Monday to pare down a pool of 70 people to a 12-person jury who will hear the case against Hampton.

Capital murder typically carries a punishment of the death penalty or life in prison without parole. However, prosecutors are not seeking the death penalty in the case, so Hampton faces an automatic life sentence without parole if he is convicted.

Hampton is one of seven of people charged in connection with the homicide case that initially began as a missing persons case when Rodriguez's family reported him missing. However, he is the only one facing a capital murder charge.

Heather Casias and Brett Garza are each charged with murder. Freddie Salinas of Abernathy and James Andrew Anderson were charged with tampering with a corpse. Toby Daughtry and Amanda Blagburn each face a count of unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, a state jail felony that carries a punishment of six months to two years in a state jail facility.

Anderson pleaded guilty in December 2020 in exchange for a 10-year prison sentence. Blagburn also pleaded guilty to her charge in exchange for a 12-month sentence.

In her opening statement, prosecutor Cara Landers told jurors the evidence at trial will show that Casias hatched a plan with Garza to rob Rodriguez, who Casias knew was about to get a monthly benefit check.

She said Rodriguez met Casias, who worked as a prostitute, at a game room where he spent a lot of time at game rooms after his wife died nearly a year before.

Meanwhile, Garza recruited Hampton to help with the robbery during which they beat and killed Rodriguez. Then Garza brought in Salinas and Anderson to move Rodriguez's body to Abernathy.

During the trial, Jurors heard from Rodriguez's daughter, Norma Wallace, who said her father had been spiraling in depression as he grieved the death of his wife nearly a year before.

In the weeks before his disappearance, she said she noticed signs of her father's further decline.

"He was coming home with bruises," she said. "There was money missing out of his account. He seemed a little bit more angry and lost."

She said on Aug. 3, 2019, her father left for Lubbock telling her he was getting an oil change for his car a white Chrysler 200. She said he never came home and knew something bad had happened to him.

"I knew the day my dad didn't come home that something was wrong," she said.

As police searched for Rodriguez, his family found that his debit card was being used in multiple stores in Lubbock.

Security camera footage from the stores showed two men, later identified as Hampton and Brett Garza using Rodriguez's card.

Garza was arrested Aug. 14, 2019, on a warrant charging him with debit card abuse.

When investigators spoke with him he revealed the plot Casias proposed to rob Rodriguez of his debit card. He reportedly told investigators that Casias knew the PIN number to Rodriguez's card and gave it to him and Hampton.

He said Casias lured Rodriguez to a field on private land near the intersection of Erskine Street and Farm to Market Road 179 where he and Hampton confronted Rodriguez, beat him until he was unresponsive. He died shortly after.

Garza led investigators to a secluded location in Abernathy where he, Salinas and and another man left Rodriguez's body.

Whitney McClendon, a forensic analyst for the Lubbock Police Department, told jurors that she found Rodriguez's body covered under a tent and a tarp by a drainage culvert. She said Rodriguez's body was in advanced stages of decomposition that the tarp and tent were soaked with bodily fluids and his skeleton was separating from his flesh.

Many of Rodriguez's family left the courtroom before pictures of the crime scene the forensic analyst took were projected on a screen for jurors to see.

In an Aug. 15, 2019 news release announcing Garza's arrest, police officials said Hampton was still at large and was believed to be in Lubbock but was able to move about without being detected.

That same day, Hampton surrendered to police in Abilene when he learned about the arrest warrant for using Rodriguez's debit card. There, he met with Lubbock police detectives who wanted to interview.

Hampton initially told the detectives he wouldn't speak with them without an attorney. However, when detectives told him about a second warrant charging him with murder, he unprompted admitted to using the debit card, saying he was a drug addict and needed drugs, but repeatedly denied being involved in Rodriguez's death.

"I've made a lot of mistakes in my life sir," he could be heard telling the detective. "But I would not, could not, kill no one."

During the trial, defense attorneys reserved their opening statements for their case in chief.

However, jurors heard from state witnesses who said Hampton told them that he was involved in Rodriguez's death but was an unwilling participant.

Hampton's niece told jurors that her uncle reportedly told her he was involved in Rodriguez's death and was distraught and upset about what happened. She said her uncle told her that he and Garza didn't expect Rodriguez to fight back and said he hit Rodriguez once on Garza's orders but couldn't continue hurting the man, saying he began to see his father's face on Rodriguez.

Meanwhile, Anderson told jurors that Garza summoned him to the Tech Inn where he learned about the fatal robbery. He said said Hampton was there and was distraught about what happened and was angry with Garza for how the robbery ended.

Anderson said Garza, admitted to killing Rodriguez and threatened him to help move Rodriguez's body. However, he said he also promised to pay him money and drugs if he helped.

Anderson initially told jurors that Garza took sole responsibility for Rodriguez's death. However, he later recanted that statement saying he was trying to help Hampton.

Anderson told jurors that while he was being held at the Lubbock County Jail on the tampering charge, he and Hampton were in the same pod and discussed Rodriguez's death.

He told jurors that Hampton reportedly told him that when they robbed Rodriguez, the elderly man attacked Garza and Hampton reportedly put an arm around Rodriguez's neck to pull him off Garza. He said Hampton reportedly told him he felt Rodriguez's last breath and that the man died in his arms.

Garza, whose case was still pending, was the last witness called before the trial ended in a mistrial. He told jurors that he made no deals with the Lubbock County District Attorneys Office in exchange for his testimony, though he was granted testimonial immunity.

He told jurors that Casias, who he was dating at the time, proposed the plan to rob Rodriguez of his money. He said she wanted to use the money to move out of the Carriage House Inn where they and her daughter were living at the time.

Garza said he recruited Hampton, who he's known for a few years, to help with the plan to rob Rodriguez.

"I felt (Hampton) had what I needed to get the job done," Garza said. "He was more familiar with it than I was."

Defense attorneys objected to the statement, which violated a rule of evidence that bars prosecutors from presenting a defendant's previous criminal history, however slight, to jurors during the guilt-innocence phase of a trial.

Before the trial, McClendon granted defense attorneys motion to keep prosecutors, through witnesses, from referring to their client's unrelated criminal history until the court decides on the admissibility of the testimony.

"Evidence of an extraneous offense or bad act is highly prejudicial in that it influences the jury to convict the defendant for being a criminal generally, rather than being guilty of the offense on trial," the motion read. "For this reason, evidence of an extraneous offense or bad act is inadmissible unless an exceptional justification is shown."

However, a handful of times throughout the trial, state's witnesses, including Garza, when asked how they knew Hampton said they met him the first time while he was being held at the Lubbock County jail on previous charges unrelated to Rodriguez's homicide.

The statements about Hampton being in jail in the past resulted in conferences in the judge's chamber after which McClendon instructed jurors to disregard those statements. He also denied defense attorneys' motion for a mistrial.

However, Garza's last statement about Hampton being familiar with robbing people, compounded by the prior inadmissible statements, gave the court no option but to declare a mistrial.

"I'm concerned that the last answer simply put us in a position where a curative instruction would not be appropriate," McClendon said.

However, he said he didn't believe that prosecutors elicited the inadmissible statements on purpose.

"Very begrudgingly, especially in light of the fact that a lot of time and effort has been put into this -- I feel bad that we're going to have to do this again -- I am granting the motion for a mistrial and we will get this trial reset," McClendon said.

This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: David Hampton faces retrial after mistrial declared in capital murder case