PALMDALE MAN'S DEATH SENTENCE UPHELD BY HIGH COURT.Byline: Bob Egelko Associated Press Associated Press: see news agency. Associated Press (AP) Cooperative news agency, the oldest and largest in the U.S. and long the largest in the world. The state Supreme Court upheld a Palmdale man's death sentence Thursday for raping and murdering an 18-month-old child. The court unanimously rejected arguments by lawyers for Ricky Lee Earp that the trial judge had unfairly undermined defense efforts to show another man was the killer. Earp, then 26, lived with his girlfriend in her Palmdale home in August 1988. Several days after a friend left her daughter, Amanda Doshier, in their care, a firefighter responding to a radio call found the girl unconscious and not breathing at the bottom of a stairway stairway or staircase Series or flight of steps that provides a means of moving from one level to another. The earliest stairways seem to have been built with walls on both sides, as in Egyptian pylons dating from the 2nd millennium BC. . She died in a hospital two days later of injuries caused by blows to the head and violent shaking. A medical examiner A public official charged with investigating all sudden, suspicious, unexplained, or unnatural deaths within the area of his or her appointed jurisdiction. A medical examiner differs from a Coroner in that a medical examiner is a physician. also found bruises Bruises Definition Bruises, or ecchymoses, are a discoloration and tenderness of the skin or mucous membranes due to the leakage of blood from an injured blood vessel into the tissues. Pupura refers to bruising as the result of a disease condition. and tears in the genital and rectal areas. Prosecutors said Earp was the only other person in the home for many hours. The day before Amanda's death, Earp got his mother to pick him up and drive him to her home in the Sacramento area. He turned himself in two days later. In various statements to friends and relatives, Earp said Amanda had fallen down the stairs Adv. 1. down the stairs - on a floor below; "the tenants live downstairs" downstairs, on a lower floor, below , was knocked down by his dog, was suffering from the heat or was with another baby sitter. In trial testimony, he denied guilt and said another man, Dennis Morgan Dennis Morgan (December 20, 1908 – September 7, 1994) was an American actor-singer. In 1945 he played the part of Jefferson Jones in the holiday classic Christmas in Connecticut opposite Barbara Stanwyck. , had been in the house and alone with the child while Earp was outside cleaning paint brushes. Morgan, who had once lived with Amanda's grandmother and had met Earp in prison, also testified but denied being at the home. He claimed that one of Earp's lawyers tried to bribe BRIBE, crim. law. The gift or promise, which is accepted, of some advantage, as the inducement for some illegal act or omission; or of some illegal emolument, as a consideration, for preferring one person to another, in the performance of a legal act. him with a $20 bill to lie on the stand, testimony the court called unbelievable. The defense later sought a new trial based on a jail inmate's claim to have overheard Morgan admitting he was at the home. Superior Court Judge Ronald Coen denied the request and was upheld by the Supreme Court. Further claims of evidence about Morgan are contained in a separate request for a new trial, still pending before the state's high court. Earp, whose father and stepfather step·fa·ther n. The husband of one's mother and not one's natural father. stepfather Noun a man who has married one's mother after the death or divorce of one's father Noun 1. were both violent alcoholics, was sent to the California Youth Authority at 16 and had an adult felony conviction for burglary. One issue in his appeal was the prosecutor's repeated questioning of Earp about why he hadn't mentioned Morgan, the supposed killer, in his numerous statements to friends and family in the three years between his arrest and trial. The court said some of the questions might have violated legal restrictions on a prosecutor's use of a defendant's post-arrest silence as evidence of guilt, but could not have affected the verdict. |
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