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Thread: Billy Ray Riggs - California

  1. #1
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    Billy Ray Riggs - California

    J41800 (2).jpg
    J41800.jpg
    Billy Ray Riggs in 2007


    Facts of the Crime:

    Billy Ray Riggs was sentenced to death in Riverside County on October 28, 1994 for the shotgun slaying of Jamie Bowie, 24, of Van Nuys. The day after Easter weekend on April 16, 1990, Bowie was heading home from Phoenix on Interstate 10 in her Volkswagen convertible when she developed car trouble. Riggs, a mechanic, and his wife Hilda Sims Riggs, offered help and followed Bowie to Banning, where they had dinner. After dinner, Bowie was kidnapped and taken to an automatic teller machine, but had no funds left in her account. She was driven to a remote citrus grove in Indio and murdered with two shotgun blasts. Her body was discovered weeks later by an orchard worker. Riggs took her car and the keys to her apartment, where he stole valuables that he later pawned. Police in Fresno found Bowie's car in 1991, and traced it back to Riggs.

  2. #2
    Administrator Moh's Avatar
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    On June 26, 2009, Riggs filed a habeas petition in Federal District Court.

    http://dockets.justia.com/docket/cal...v04624/447658/

  3. #3
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    April 12, 2013

    BANNING: Conviction and sentence overturn sought in 23-year-old slaying

    A woman wants a Riverside County judge to overturn her guilty plea and 25-year-to-life sentence she received in return for testifying against her husband in a 1990 Riverside County kidnap-murder.

    Hilda Riggs, now 49, said she was battered by her husband, Billy Ray Riggs, 66, who is now on death row for the murder. His sentence has been upheld by the California Supreme Court.

    Hilda Riggs wants her case reviewed under a California law that allows reconsideration of abuse victims convicted of violent felonies before intimate partner battering was seriously considered in the criminal justice system. A guilty plea has the same legal status as a conviction.

    The petition, filed with Riverside County Superior Court Judge Gary Tranbarger, claims that while prosecutors used Billy Ray Riggs’ battering of Hilda and other partners as evidence of his cruelty, they disregarded and failed to inform her of its exculpatory use when negotiating their plea bargain with her.

    “Had Ms. Riggs been given that consideration by the DA’s office, or understood that she could have expert testimony at her trial, then the outcome for her would have been different,” said Heidi Rummel, co-director of USC Gould School of Law’s Post-Conviction Justice Project, which is representing Riggs along with attorneys from the Los Angeles law firm of O’Melveny & Myers.

    The petition says that if she had gone to trial using intimate partner battery as a defense “she would have been acquitted of first-degree murder or, at most, convicted of a lesser charge.”

    Riggs made her plea in 1994, and the law permits review of intimate partner battery petitions for violent felony convictions made before August, 1996. It was amended in 2005 to widen the eligibility of petitions. Previously it was available only to those who had been convicted of killing their abusers.

    Four previous petitions by Hilda Riggs, the last filed in 2003, were rejected. Her current petition also says she is undergoing chemotherapy for breast cancer. She also has been denied parole.

    The Riverside County District Attorney’s office has filed an “informal response” in which it argues that Hilda Riggs has not shown she is entitled to the relief she claims, and that her petition is untimely — filed eight years after she became eligible.

    “Despite petitioner’s claim that ‘not a word was uttered about battered woman syndrome…that phrase was spoken quite a bit” in the case record, the prosecutor’s response says

    Battered woman syndrome “formed the basis” of the plea-deal negotiations Hilda Riggs made with prosecutors, the district attorney says. “Her tardy contention…is false.” The prosecutor wants the petition denied.

    Billy Ray Riggs was convicted in July 1994 of first-degree murder in the shotgun slaying of Jamie Bowie, 24, of Van Nuys, who disappeared while she was driving home from Arizona along Interstate 10 on Easter weekend in April 1990.

    Bowie’s car, a 1978 Volkswagen convertible, broke down around Indio and Riggs and his wife offered help and followed her to Banning, where they stopped for dinner. Riggs was a mechanic.

    After dinner, Riggs kidnapped Bowie at gunpoint and they returned to Indio, where he killed her and took her car. Bowie’s body was found in a citrus grove nearly a month later.

    Riggs sold Bowie’s car to a garage in Fresno after replacing its vehicle identification number with the number from his own Volkswagen.

    The car was stolen from a woman who bought it from the garage and when police recovered it, a hidden vehicle identification number stamped into part of the car confirmed that it was Bowie’s. The garage had the paperwork from Riggs’ sale, making him the prime suspect.

    Billy Ray Riggs and Hilda Riggs were arrested in Inglewood in January 1992, after they were identified as suspects on the television program “America’s Most Wanted.”

    April 22 is the next date scheduled for the matter.

    http://blog.pe.com/government/2013/0...r-old-slaying/

  4. #4
    Senior Member CnCP Legend JLR's Avatar
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    Riggs has had a fully briefed habeas petition pending at the California Supreme Court since February 13, 2015.

    http://appellatecases.courtinfo.ca.g...party&auth=yes


    Resentenced to LWOP.

    https://inmatelocator.cdcr.ca.gov/De...aspx?ID=J41800

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