Judge rules to admit Zoe Campos' accused killer's confession to police at trial
A 29-year-old man's confession to police that he killed and buried 18-year-old Zoe Campos seven years ago will be used against him at trial, a Lubbock judge ruled on Friday.
District Judge Douglas Freitag issued an order denying Carlos Rodriquez's request to throw out his 2018 confession to Lubbock homicide detectives.
Carlos Rodriquez is charged with murder in Campos' November 2013, death. The charge carried a punishment of five years to life in prison.
The order came after a hearing Thursday in the 140th District Court on Rodriguez's motion to suppress his confession.
A trial is tentatively set for Aug. 15 and his defense attorneys hoped to throw out that key piece of evidence, saying detectives used tactics that pressured their client into involuntarily confessing to killing Campos and helping authorities find her remains, which were buried at a home in south Lubbock where Rodriquez used to live.
They also argued that police used an informant at the jail to elicit incriminating information from Rodriquez, violating his fourth amendment right.
Campos was initially reported missing on Nov. 19, 2013. Five years later, Lubbock homicide detectives found her remains buried in the backyard of a home in the 1900 block of 70th Street, which police visited multiple times over the years during their search for Campos.
About a week after her disappearance, police found her vehicle, a 1997 silver Lincoln Town Ca,r abandoned at an apartment complex in the 5500 block of Utica Avenue. Police found her jacket and phone charger in the trunk of the vehicle.
Meanwhile, Rodriquez was a person of interest in the case as investigators learned he may have been the last person to see Campos alive.
During a Nov. 19, 2018 interview with Lubbock police, police say Rodriquez admitted to killing Campos. He said he strangled Campos to death then buried her body in the backyard of his home at the time. He later led detectives to the spot where her remains were found.
On July 12, Rodriquez's defense attorney filed a motion to suppress his confession, saying detectives ignored his request for an attorney in prior interviews, unfairly pressuring him to ultimately confess to killing Campos.
By December 2017, the case had been handed to a third detective, David Schreiber, who wanted to speak with Rodriquez about Campo's disappearance.
Rodriquez was being held at the Lubbock County Detention Center on an unrelated count of stalking when Schreiber and Lubbock police Sgt. Brandon Price spoke with him on Dec. 5, 2017.
The detectives brought Rodriquez from the jail to police headquarters for an interview that spanned more than two hours. The detectives told Rodriquez that they knew Campos was dead and that she was killed at his previous residence. However, at the time, police had no evidence to corroborate that.
They also told Rodriquez his DNA was found inside Campo's jacket.
However, none of the detectives asked Rodriquez directly about his involvement. Instead, they pressured him into confessing, saying they believed his criminal behavior was increasing because he was haunted by his role in Campos' death. They told him confessing to what he did would end the cycle that brought him in and out of jail.
Rodriquez didn't confess. Instead, he told detectives that "every time I try to talk about anything that happened that night ... I always want to like ... talk to an attorney about it so I know where I am at legally. I need to know if it is intentional or whatever ... It's not easy talking without knowing what is going to happen."
Rodriquez's attorney Jeff Nicholson said his client's statement was an obvious request for an attorney. Instead, the detectives shifted their questions to another topic.
It wasn't until Rodriquez verbally stated he wanted an attorney that the detectives ended the interview.
Schreiber and Price disagreed.
The detectives told the court during Thursday's hearing that they met with Rodriquez to set a tone by letting him believe they had more information about his involvement with Campos' disappearance than they had at the time.
They said Rodriquez didn't expressly request for an attorney when he said he wanted legal advice and kept speaking.
Price told the court that he didn't believe Rodriquez was specifically asking for an attorney when he said he wanted legal advice. He said he's seen suspects seek legal advice from family members.
"He could be wanting to call his uncle," Price said. "Sometimes they talk to their mothers ... and their mothers say, 'I think you should tell the truth.'"
Detectives wouldn't speak with Rodriquez until 11 months later. Meanwhile, a confidential witness being held at the jail called law enforcement in July 2018 saying he had information that Rodriquez killed and buried Campos but was adamant that he would only give it in exchange for a favorable deal on his own case.
Records showed the informant relented and provided the information without a deal.
Nicholson argued that records that were available to him showed the informant's change of heart was suspicious because a recording of the interview indicated the informant and Price got into a heated argument about the offer.
Moreover, the informant didn't become an official confidential informant, which would conceal his identity in court records, until the month his client made his confession.
Nicholson said the scenario reeked of a secret deal being struck for the informant to speak with his client as an agent of law enforcement.
Prosecutor Barron Slack told the court that the evidence showed the informant acted on his own, saying he already had the information from Rodriquez before he contacted law enforcement.
Slack said the Lubbock County District Attorney's office never approved a deal with the informant, nor was there any evidence that the police did either. He said the record showed detectives made it clear to the informant that he was not working for law enforcement.
In November 2018, Lubbock police had enough information to begin digging in the backyard of Rodriquez's former home to search for Campos' remains.
At some point, police found what they initially believed to be a human bone. Schreiber said he met Rodriquez a second time to confront him with the evidence. The interview ended quickly when Rodriquez asked for an attorney.
The bone was later identified as an animal bone, Schreiber said.
However, a week later, Rodriquez contacted jail officials saying he wanted to speak with Schreiber and confess to killing and burying Campos.
Slack played a portion of that third interview at the hearing. Rodriquez could be heard saying that he and Campos were at his home smoking synthetic marijuana and "freaked out on her" and started hitting her.
He said she was about to call the police when he strangled her and she passed out.
"I think she was already dead," he could be heard saying.
He later led police to the spot where Campos' remains were found.
Nicholson argued that his client's confession was a culmination of the detectives' unfair tactics that began in the interview 11 months prior when they ignored his client's initial request for an attorney.
"It's a snowball effect," he said. "He gets more nervous and nervous... Once a person is denied counsel they sit around for 11 months, they get desperate and they sit around doing something foolish."
He said detectives knew that his client was requesting an attorney when he said he wanted legal advice.
"He just didn't say the right word," Nicholson said. "There's no law that he has to say the word 'attorney.'"
Slack argued that the record showed Rodriquez knew how to terminate that December interview because it ended when the defendant expressly asked for an attorney.
He said the detectives also weren't required to bring a lawyer to consult with Rodriquez.
The motion to suppress didn't address the July 2019 letter Rodriquez reportedly wrote to local media outlets in which he admits to Campos' killing, saying he acted while he was high on synthetic marijuana.
In the letter, Rodriquez said he carried the guilt and shame of Zoe’s killing for years. He apologized to Campos’ family and the community.
He said he believed the jail inmate to whom he confided betrayed him to the police. However, he said he is not mad at the inmate.
“He did me a huge favor,” he wrote.
Rodriquez wrote in detail the moment the drugs took over his senses, making him believe Campos had turned into a demon.
Though he admitted to killing Campos, he wrote that he was not a murderer and described his actions that night as reckless, which is a culpable mental state in manslaughter charges. Manslaughter is a second-degree felony that carries a punishment of two to 20 years in prison.
“I’m not asking for a dismissal,” he wrote. “I just want a fair judgement and not to be labeled as a murderer, but as a 20-year-old kid who made a mistake because of K-2 playing a major factor.”
However, voluntary intoxication is not a defense to a crime, though it may be used to mitigate punishment after a defendant is found guilty.
This article originally appeared on Lubbock Avalanche-Journal: Confession in Zoe Campos homicide to be admitted at trial
