Gary L. Quigg v. Roger W. Crist, Warden of the Montana State Prison

Quigg appeals the denial of his petition for writ of habeas corpus. This court has jurisdiction pursuant to 28 U.S.C. § 2253 . We affirm.

I. BACKGROUND

Petitioner Gary Quigg was convicted by a Montana state court of the first-degree murder of Billings businessman Lee Robbins in April 1969. Robbins was shot and killed on the night of April 8, 1968, in an unpopulated area near the Billings airport in what apparently began as an armed robbery. Officers found no physical evidence at the scene. The car which Robbins had been driving was found early the next morning in a downtown Billings parking lot.

The rather strong facts pointing circumstantially to the guilt of Quigg are set forth exhaustively in the opinion of the Montana Supreme Court, infra. We summarize only the salient features. Robbins died from two gunshot wounds to the head which were inflicted by .22 caliber bullets. A .22 caliber pistol which Robbins had kept in his car was missing after the robbery. Quigg was first suspected of involvement in August 1968, when bullets which had killed a guard dog in an unrelated burglary of a bar were compared with the bullets which had killed Robbins. Investigators determined that…