July 16, 2012 20:46

Death sentence for Dave Navarro's mother's killer is overturned

The Jane's Addiction guitarist's mother was murdered in 1983

Photo: PA

The man who killed Dave Navarro of Jane's Addiction's mother is set to leave death row in California.

John Riccardi was convicted of shooting and killing his girlfriend Connie Hopkins Navarro in 1994 after murdering her over a decade earlier in 1983, and then going on the run. He has since been on death row in California for the crime as well as for the murder of Connie's best friend Susan Marshall Jory, but today the state's supreme court reversed his death sentence, reports LAist.

The court stated that Riccardi, 76, was denied a fair trial after the judge "erroneously excused a prospective juror during jury selection". Riccardi was one of the oldest people on death row in California. He was captured in 1991 after a viewer tip-off when the case was recounted on an episode of America's Most Wanted.

Speaking to America's Most Wanted in 2004, guitarist Navarro said that he was supposed to visit and stay with his mother on the night of her murder but at the last minute stayed at his father's house instead. He said that he thinks he would also have been killed had he gone to his mother's apartment. He said: "So I really do believe that that's some sort of divine intervention that I can't explain."

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