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Even without a body, there was sufficient evidence to support the finding that a Howard County wastewater worker killed his wife, the Court of Special Appeals said yesterday.
It took police four years of investigation before they charged Paul Stephen Riggins Jr. with the first-degree murder of Nancy Riggins, who disappeared in the summer of 1996.
It took the Court of Appeals nearly a year after oral arguments to issue its 65-page opinion.
| WHAT THE COURT HELD |
| Case: Paul Stephen Riggins Jr. v. State of Maryland, CSA No. 2261, Sept. Term 2001. Reported. Opinion by Kenney, J. Filed Feb. 26, 2004.Issue: Did the trial court err in finding legally sufficient evidence to support the appellant’s first-degree murder conviction when no body or physical evidence was ever found?Holding: No. Circ*mstantial evidence was sufficient to corroborate the witness testimony.Counsel: Stacy W. McCormack for appellant; Diane E. Keller for appellee.RecordFax: #4-0226-01 (65 pages) |
Stacy M. McCormack, who represented Paul Riggins on his appeal, said she plans to appeal again.
“This is not the last step. I’m sure it will go up to the Court of Appeals,” she said. “A cert petition is very likely.”
Paul Riggins had returned home from work at the Patapsco Waste Water Treatment Plant early one July morning, but said his wife was gone when he got there. The following day, he called the police to report her missing.
In the days that followed, Paul Riggins proposed to Amy Cole, his daughter’s babysitter and lover of four years. Their affair began while Cole was a minor.
According to Cole’s testimony at Paul Riggins’ 14-day trial, Nancy Riggins learned of the affair and had threatened to call the police.
Ultimately Paul Riggins spent 13 months in the Howard County Detention Center after pleading guilty to sexual child abuse.
At the murder trial in 2001, the state’s key witness was David Marshall, a former inmate who had spent time in the detention center with Riggins. Marshall testified that Riggins had confessed to choking his wife, then dumping her body.
Another fellow inmate, John McKenny, testified that Riggins told him his wife was “fish food” because he had dumped her body at the Patapsco plant while his boss wasn’t looking.
The police investigation also revealed that Riggins had contacted a friend in the weeks prior to his wife’s disappearance, inquiring as to how he could get a gun and dispose of a body.
The Howard County jury convicted Riggins of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to life imprisonment.
On appeal Riggins argued, among other things, that his conviction could not stand because the police never found his wife’s body and because the trial judge denied his request for a jury instruction on the need for evidence to corroborate his confession.
The appellate court disagreed.
“Clearly, a murder conviction is not dependent upon the recovery of the victim’s body,” Kenney wrote.
Noting a split in authority on the issue, the appeals court also said the trial judge properly denied a the request for the corroboration instruction.
“We conclude that, as a general rule, the court makes the legal determination of whether the evidence, including the sufficiency of the independent evidence corroborating [Riggins’] confession for the purpose of establishing the corpus delicti of the crime, is sufficient to support a guilty verdict,” Kenney wrote.
Kathryn Grill Graeff, chief of the Attorney General’s criminal appeals division, said the issue was one of first impression.
The appeals court “found that trial courts are generally not required to instruct a jury that a defendant’s confession must be corroborated by evidence,” she said.
Riggins also argued that the trial judge erred in allowing a police officer to bolster the credibility of David Marshall, who had testified as part of a plea bargain.
According to the trial transcripts, when Lt. Greg Marshall, who is unrelated to David Marshall, was asked whether David Marshall had been promised anything in exchange for his testimony, the officer said he told the inmate all he would be able to do for him is represent that he had given “truthful testimony.”
Riggins’ attorney objected but the appeals court said the testimony only referred to the promise, not David Marshall’s actual credibility.
“It was not the intent, nor do we believe the effect, of Lieutenant Marshall’s testimony to convey his belief or opinion that David Marshall was a ‘truthful’ witness,” Judge James A. Kenney III wrote for the court yesterday.
