After being featured as a fugitive on America's Most Wanted, an Orange County killer caught in Arizona and convicted of a brutal murder has been begging officials to reopen his case.
Cuong Viet Nguyen, 31, maintains that he killed Tri Bui in self defense following a ridiculously stupid 2005 spat outside the All Star Cafe, a pool hall, in Stanton.
A 2009 jury convicted Nguyen of murder, attempted murder and determined he'd committed a prior robbery. Superior Court Judge Richard F. Toohey sentenced him to prison for a lengthy period.
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But the killer took his case to the California Court of Appeal in
Santa Ana and there in May 2011 got a panel of justices to reverse a
prior robbery conviction as unsubstantiated and thus reduce his punishment by 15 years.
That
semi-victory must have given Nguyen inspiration to seek additional
legal concessions. In May, he appealed his case to federal judges. But his
luck had run out.
This week, U.S. District Court Judge John A. Kronstadt accepted a negative case report by Magistrate Judge Arthur Nakazato and dismissed Nguyen's federal appeal.
Upshot: The killer will remain locked in the California State Prison at Sacramento to serve his 40 years to life sentence.
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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.