Cuesta-Rodriguez v. Carpenter, No. 16-6315 (10th Cir. 2019)
Annotate this CaseCarlos Cuesta-Rodriguez challenges his Oklahoma conviction for first-degree murder and his accompanying sentence of death. The victim, Olimpia Fisher, and her adult daughter, Katya Chacon, lived with Cuesta-Rodriguez in a home Fisher and Cuesta-Rodriguez had purchased together. In the year following the home purchase, Cuesta-Rodriguez and Fisher’s relationship was strained. Cuesta- Rodriguez feared Fisher was cheating on him. Whenever Fisher and Chacon would leave the house, Cuesta-Rodriguez would question them “about where they were going and what they would be doing.” The relationship deteriorated to the point that both Cuesta-Rodriguez and Fisher wanted the other to move out. An argument between the two ended when Cuesta-Rodriquez shot Fisher in both eyes. The district court denied relief and denied a certificate of appealability (COA). The Tenth Circuit concluded Cuesta-Rodriguez was not persuasive in his argument that combined errors led to a trial that wasn’t “fundamentally fair.” As such, the Court affirmed the district court's judgment that Cuesta-Rodriquez was not entitled to relief.
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