Family Asks Jury to Waive Death Penalty

Relatives of a Palmdale man convicted of sexually molesting and killing his 17-month-old godchild tearfully pleaded with a San Fernando Superior Court jury Monday to spare the man from a death sentence.

“Don’t kill him,” begged Barbara Nusbaum, the aunt of Ricky Lee Earp, 29. “I can’t imagine not having him around.”

Earp’s mother, Helene Perusse, broke down on the witness stand before tearfully asking the jury not to recommend sentencing her son to death because “I love him” and “I need him.”

The pleas for leniency from the two women and Earp’s sister came on the first day of the penalty phase of Earp’s trial.

Last week, the same jury found Earp guilty of raping, sodomizing and murdering the child, Amanda Nicole Dorshier, in August, 1988. The jury will recommend to the judge whether Earp should be sentenced to death or life in prison.

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz did not make an opening statement.

Adrienne S. Dell, one of Earp’s two defense attorneys, asked the jury in her opening statement not to let their anger at Amanda’s death sway them in deciding Earp’s punishment. Dell said the appropriate penalty would be for Earp to “spend the rest of his life in prison.”

The three women testifying Monday sought to persuade the jury to give Earp the lesser sentence by describing Earp’s childhood that led to brushes with the law beginning when he was 11, when he and a friend vandalized vehicles parked in a quarry.

Throughout their testimony, Earp frequently wiped tears from his eyes.

Perusse said both Earp’s father and later his stepfather were alcoholics who often ignored him or would verbally abuse him.

Nusbaum said that when Earp was 2 or 3, Earp’s father took away his teddy bear and threw it in the trash, saying that only sissies played with stuffed animals. Earp later retrieved the teddy bear and was forced to conceal it from his father, she said.