Defense Witness Testifies He Was Asked to Lie : Courts: Ricky Lee Earp, accused of killing a 17-month-old girl, had said the man was at his house when the child was hurt. The man denies it.

The man the defense claims was present when a 17-month-old girl was sexually molested and killed three years ago in Palmdale testified Tuesday that he was not there, but that the defendant and an investigator asked him to lie and say that he was.

Dennis Morgan, who was subpoenaed by the defense, said that the defendant, Ricky Lee Earp, 29, asked him last month during a bus ride from San Fernando Superior Court back to County Jail to serve as a witness in his trial. Morgan was in the courthouse after being arrested earlier on a theft charge.

Morgan, who first met Earp in 1985 when both were in prison and who gave Earp a job after being released on parole a year later, said that he was told by a defense investigator to testify that he stopped briefly at Earp’s home on the day Earp’s goddaughter was hospitalized and that he saw another unknown man in the house at the time.

“He needed somebody else to testify that someone else was in the house,” Morgan said under cross-examination from Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz.

But outside the courtroom, Earp’s two attorneys denied that anyone asked Morgan to fabricate a story and said there were many inconsistencies in Morgan’s testimony, which is to continue today.

“We have found several contradictions and at least 14 lies so far,” attorney Louis H. Bernstein said.

Under direct examination, Earp’s other attorney, Adrienne S. Dell, asked Morgan if he was now fabricating this story to avoid prosecution for the molestation and murder of the child, Amanda Nicole Doshier.

“You’re out of your mind,” Morgan responded.

Last week, Earp testified that Morgan came to his home unexpectedly on Aug. 25, 1988, the day the child was rushed to the hospital with head injuries. The child died two days later and was found to have been sexually molested.

Earp said he never saw Morgan injure the child, but that Morgan was alone with the child in the house several times during his nearly two-hour visit.

Foltz, the prosecutor, contends there were no other people in the house the day the child was injured. Earp called paramedics to the house to take the child to the hospital, but fled the area after seeing a patrol car arrive at his home.

Earp turned himself in to authorities in Sacramento accompanied by his mother the day after the child died.