Richards v. Richards
United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit
28 August 2008
No. 06-56562 D.C. No. CV 02-7583 CAS (RNBx)

Murder Co-conspirator not Entitled as Insurance Beneficiary

This case seeks the opinion of the United States Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit concerning conflicting claims to the proceeds of a $1M insurance policy. The Nationwide Life Insurance Company comes before the Court on an interpleader action which basically asks the court to decide who among the contesting parties should be entitled to the insurance policy.

The antecedent facts are as follows.

It appears that Angelina and Bryan Richards are married, and remained married, since 1998. In the year 2001, Bryan obtained a life insurance policy from Nationwide in the amount of $1M dollars naming his wife, Angelina as the primary beneficiary and names Bryce and Kendall as alternate beneficiaries, their children.

Bryan was found dead later that same year. He was found to have been murdered by means on non-ligature manual strangulation. Thorough investigation, findings and filing of criminal charges had been made. Subsequently, one Rafiel Torre was convicted by the state court jury for the murder. As of the making of this decision by the Court, Torre’s appeal of his conviction is still pending.

Prior this however, Angelina had already applied and received $50,000 advance payment from National – only several months after her husband’s death. This prompted National to file this interpleader action naming Angelina, Bryce and Kendall, as defendants. Keith, Bryan’s brother, was later on appointed as Bryce and Kendall’s guardian.

Angelina thereafter filed a cross-claim against Keith and a counter-claim against Nationwide seeking a declaration that she is entitled to the proceeds as the primary named beneficiary under the policy. Keith, on the other hand, also filed a cross-claim against Angelina seeking the return of the advance payment received by the latter and even asserted that Angelina conspired in the murder of his brother. Therefore, he theorized, the proceeds are payable to the couple’s children, not Angelina.

Ultimately, the district court made a factual determination that Angelina indeed conspired in, aided, and abetted her husband’s murder. The district court ruled that she is disqualified from receiving any proceeds of the life insurance policy under the California law.

Angelina contested the decision of the trial court. She asserts that the court erred in the latter’s treatment of her pretrial assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination and in the admission of the deposition testimony of one witness which became the bases, among others, of the conclusion regarding her conspiring with the murderer of her husband.

It appeared that during trial, Angelina was precluded from testifying that she was not involved in Bryan’s murder because of her earlier assertion of the Fifth Amendment privilege against self-incrimination that she refused to answer questions about this subject during her deposition.

The United States Court of Appeals agreed with the district court. It held that it committed no error when it precluded Angelina from testifying as to her involvement, or lack of it, to her husband’s murder after she had asserted Fifth Amendment privilege during deposition when asked about her involvement.

The Court also upheld the district court’s drawing of an adverse inference from her assertion of the Fifth Amendment. The Court concluded that there were independent evidence indicating Angelina’s involvement in the murder of her husband that entitled the district court to draw adverse inference from her Fifth Amendment invocation.

Therefore, she cannot benefit from her deceased husband’s insurance policy because the California law expressly disqualified her.