The California Supreme Court refused Wednesday to review the case against a man convicted of slashing a cigar store clerk’s throat, stabbing him and trying to strangle him with a wire during a robbery in Manhattan Beach.
The state’s highest court denied a defense petition, seeking a review of the case against Tyler Lee Rodgers, who was convicted of attempted murder, robbery and kidnapping in the Aug. 16, 2012, attack on Naveed Mirza at The Cigar and Smoke Shop.
In October, a three-justice panel from California’s 2nd District Court of Appeal rejected the defense’s contention there was not enough evidence to support Rodgers’ conviction on the kidnapping count.
“The evidence did not merely show that Mirza was simply moved out of sight to keep him out of view or from interfering while defendant grabbed as much money as he could. He was moved a substantial distance from the public area of the store, through two sections of hallway to a secluded room, so that defendant could violently interrogate him regarding the location of money and about the surveillance cameras, and ultimately eliminate him as a witness to the robbery,” the appellate court panel found in its Oct. 1 ruling.
Rodgers went into the shop with a box, pulled out a shotgun, forced the clerk to the back of the store, handcuffed him and demanded to know where money was kept.
Rodgers then took cash from the register, demanded any other money in the shop, cut Mirza’s throat from one side to the other, stabbed him three times in the neck and used a long metal wire to try to strangle him.
Rodgers also stabbed the man in the cheek, multiple times in the neck and then in one hand before slashing another hand, the appellate court panel noted. Mirza survived, but underwent surgery and extensive physical therapy.
Some of the attack was caught on video until Rodgers realized that he was being recorded and started tearing out the equipment, but images were recovered from a hard drive, according to Deputy District Attorney Ethan Milius.
Rodgers, arrested eight days after the attack, was convicted of attempted murder and robbery, in addition to the kidnapping charge, along with a count of residential burglary stemming from a June 4, 2012, break-in at a Torrance home.
During one court hearing, he reached behind himself and apparently ate his own feces. But two court-appointed doctors later determined he was competent to stand trial.
Rodgers also rubbed feces on his face while in a courthouse lockup during his trial in Torrance before Superior Court Judge Mark Arnold. He had waived his right to a jury trial.
Rodgers was sentenced in June 2013 to 40 years and eight months to life in state prison.
— City News Service