A Bryans Road man received a life sentence with all but 30 years suspended on Wednesday for the March 2018 torture and attempted murder of his wife.
So many people turned out in support of 46-year-old former Prince George’s County corrections officer Armando Quispe Rodriguez that his sentencing proceedings had to be moved to a larger courtroom to accommodate the size of the crowd. Rodriguez pleaded guilty to attempted first-degree murder in March.
In court before Judge Amy J. Bragunier, Assistant State’s Attorney Sarah Freeman played the 911 call Rodriguez made the day he attacked his wife. In the call, he told the dispatcher, “She’s stabbed up and I’m stabbed up.” His wife was downstairs bleeding, he said.
“Can you help your wife?” the dispatcher asked.
“No,” Rodriguez replied.
During the hours-long assault, Rodriguez bludgeoned his wife in the head with a gumball machine, stabbed her 22 times and attempted to suffocate her with different objects, Freeman said. When officers arrived at their Bryans Road residence, Rodriguez’s wife was discovered bleeding out on the landing of the basement stairwell, Freeman said. The woman had been handcuffed to the railing to prevent her escape, and first responders left her shackles in place when they moved her to the ambulance.
Anger over a failing marriage, Freeman contended, drove Rodriguez to the brutal assault on his wife.
That day, Freeman said, Rodriguez had also called his brother several times and said he was having “domestic problems with his wife.” He’d left their children with his mother, Freeman said, and Rodriguez asked his brother to pick up his children when possible. Shortly before the attack, he’d also searched online for the location of a “neck artery.”
“No person, no woman, should be left for dead on a railing due to a failed marriage,” Freeman said.
She also contested what she said would be Rodriguez and defense attorney Thomas Mooney’s contention that Rodriguez had “blacked out” during the assault, saying that was little more than attempted “mitigation in sentencing” and nothing else.
“He was self-aware enough to care for his own wounds, self-aware enough to call 911,” Freeman said.
Mooney did, in fact, contend that his client had been suffering from “mental anguish” that day that had led him to act out of character. Rodriguez isn’t a bad person, Mooney said, and the amount of people gathered in support of him in the courtroom is testimony to that. Mooney noted the crowd of people was “primarily coworkers” of Rodriguez’s from the Prince George’s County Department of Corrections.
“The information is not in line with the character of the person that many of these people have come to support,” Mooney said. He detailed, at length, his client’s upbringing in an abusive home. His client had led a “law-abiding life” despite the circumstances he was raised in, Mooney said.
The day of the attack, Mooney said there was “clearly a period where [Rodriguez] was acting in a way he really doesn’t recall,” but he “snapped out of it and got her aid. Rodriguez had abandonment issues from his childhood, Mooney said, and his wife’s stated desire to end the marriage was his worst nightmare.
“He feared it and it became his reality,” Mooney said. “It’s not a defense, but it’s certainly something to consider.”
Speaking to the court, Keyia Rodriguez said she blamed herself, in part, for not having ended the marriage earlier. Her husband, she said, “is not a horrible person. He made a horrible decision with horrible consequences.”
“I sincerely and genuinely forgive him, but I will never forget,” Keyia Rodriguez said. “I only feel terrible for our children, who lost their father in all of this. This is the beginning of a different life, one without you.”
Rodriguez’s brother, Pedro Bernal, said he was “begging” the judge for Rodriguez to be afforded the chance to see their dying mother. He also pleaded for his brother to have the chance to be able to see his children.
“I hope in my heart they can see their father very soon,” Bernal said. “So they know he’ll be there for them every day of their life.”
Another supporter of Rodriguez, Ellen DePerez, said she was asking the judge to “dismiss all charges and bring Armando home.” Rodriguez, she said, has learned life is precious and has a lot to offer. He’d “mastered hiding feelings” before, DePerez said, but this assault was a wake up call for him. He will now no longer let “provocation” rule his actions, she assured the judge.
“Forgive him and give him a second chance,” DePerez said. “He’s ready to pursue happiness.”
Fellow Prince George’s corrections officer Tammy Owens said the actions Rodriguez pleaded guilty to do not characterize the man she knows. Being a corrections officer is a stressful occupation, Owens said, one that comes with high rates of post-traumatic stress disorder, depression and suicide.
“There’s no better role model in the workplace than him,” Owens said.
Another corrections officer, Maria Flores, said Rodriguez is “not what the media has portrayed.” Rodriguez had been like a mentor to her, Flores said, someone who “uplifted me with every challenge.”
“We all need Armando out here, especially his mother,” Flores said.
Another fellow corrections officer, Charles Scott, echoed the statements about Rodriguez’s actions not defining him. The man he knew was loving and family-oriented, Scott said.
“It doesn’t look good, but the guy I know is a great guy,” Scott said.
Ron Cooper, who described himself as Rodriguez’s therapist and friend, asked the judge to consider the religious conversion Rodriguez has undergone since his incarceration. Cooper also said he feels reconciliation between Armando and Keyia Rodriguez would one day be possible: At that, the woman sat shaking her head.
Rodriguez was the last to speak in his own defense, and spent a half hour going over his own background as so many others before had.
He was a devoted family man, he insisted, and was scared for his children at the thought of them having to see their divorce.
He wished to apologize for “mentally and physically scarring her forever,” he said.
“They know the real person Armando is,” Rodriguez said. “That person in the basement, that wasn’t me.”
“The state describes me as a monster, an evil person. I’m far beyond that,” Rodriguez added. “I’ve been transformed by the spirit. … Don’t let this bad decision define who I am.”
The guidelines in Rodriguez’s case dictated he should receive 12-20 years. Bragunier opted to sentence him above the guidelines based on the sheer brutality of his actions.
“You’re only not a killer by the grace of God. That’s what you had intended to do,” Bragunier told Rodriguez in administering his sentence. “… I will not normalize what you did.”
Originally Posted on The Maryland Independent