422
O'Connor, J., concurring
card was found nearby. Shortly after Rucker's body was discovered, petitioner's second victim, Los Fresnos Police Officer Enrique Carrisalez, stopped a car speeding away from the murder scene. When Carrisalez approached, the driver shot him. Carrisalez lived long enough to identify petitioner as his assailant. Enrique Hernandez, a civilian who was riding with Carrisalez, also identified petitioner as the culprit. Moreover, at the time of the stop, Carrisalez radioed a description of the car and its license plates to the police station. The license plates corresponded to a car that petitioner was known to drive. Although the car belonged to petitioner's girlfriend, she did not have a set of keys; petitioner did. He even had a set in his pocket at the time of his arrest.
When the police arrested petitioner, they found more than car keys; they also found evidence of the struggle between petitioner and Officer Rucker. Human blood was spattered across the hood, the left front fender, the grill, and the interior of petitioner's car. There were spots of blood on petitioner's jeans; blood had even managed to splash into his wallet. The blood was, like Rucker's and unlike petitioner's, type A. Blood samples also matched Rucker's enzyme profile. Only 6% of the Nation's population shares both Rucker's blood type and his enzyme profile.
But the most compelling piece of evidence was entirely of petitioner's own making. When the police arrested petitioner, he had in his possession a signed letter in which he acknowledged responsibility for the murders; at the end of the letter, petitioner offered to turn himself in:
" 'I am terribly sorry for those [to whom] I have brought grief . . . . What happened to Rucker was for a certain reason. . . . [H]e violated some of [the] laws [of my drug business] and suffered the penalty, like the one you have for me when the time comes. . . . The other officer [Carrisalez] . . . had not[hing] to do [with] this. He was out to do what he had to do, protect, but that's life. . . . [I]f
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