Orange County's Billy Jhonathan Ruiz was certain that his girlfriend Misty and his step-father Raul were having sex in November 2009.
So Ruiz enticed them to join him in the same vehicle for an ambush confrontation.
Intoxicated and armed with a handgun, Ruiz voiced his fears and from the back seat expressed his displeasure with their denials by firing a shot that hit the windshield and sprayed shattered glass in their faces.
Misty repeatedly assured him she loved him but that didn't quell his paranoia either.
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According to court records, Ruiz ordered her to pull her pants and
underwear down in the car so that he could inspect her vagina to
determine if she'd had sex that afternoon with his step-father. He
wasn't able to decide, ordered everyone home, kicked Misty in
the face and threatened to kill the pair.
In May 2011, an Orange
County jury convicted Ruiz of two counts of kidnapping, two second
degree robberies, two assaults, one criminal threat and, given that he
was already a convicted felon, illegal possession of a firearm.
Superior Court Judge Richard W. Stanford sentenced him to prison.
Ruiz
appealed, claiming that the shooting had been an accidental discharge
of the gun and that he can be guilty because he didn't intend to violate
any criminal laws. His voluntary intoxication was to blame, he argued.
This month, a California Court of Appeal based in Santa Ana rejected the complaint.
Upshot: The 26-year-old Ruiz will remain in Wasco State Prison to continue serving his sentence of 25 years and eight months.
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CNN-featured investigative reporter R. Scott Moxley has won Journalist of the Year honors at the Los Angeles Press Club; been named Distinguished Journalist of the Year by the LA Society of Professional Journalists; obtained one of the last exclusive prison interviews with Charles Manson disciple Susan Atkins; won inclusion in Jeffrey Toobin’s The Best American Crime Reporting for his coverage of a white supremacist’s senseless murder of a beloved Vietnamese refugee; launched multi-year probes that resulted in the FBI arrests and convictions of the top three ranking members of the Orange County Sheriff’s Department; and gained praise from New York Times Magazine writers for his “herculean job” exposing entrenched Southern California law enforcement corruption.