Execution Ordered in Child’s Death : Courts: Palmdale man shows no emotion as he is sentenced in the 1988 rape and killing of his young goddaughter.

A San Fernando Superior Court judge Friday ordered a Palmdale man executed for sexually molesting and killing his 17-month-old goddaughter, rejecting last-minute defense motions for a new trial or lesser sentence.

Ricky Lee Earp, 30, showed no emotion as Judge Ronald Coen sentenced him to death for raping, sodomizing and murdering Amanda Nicole Doshier in August, 1988.

“I don’t have any animosity against you; I don’t even know you,” but “the crime you committed is monstrous,” Coen told Earp.

As with all death sentences, it will automatically be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

On Aug. 25, 1988, Earp’s girlfriend left for work, leaving him alone with the child. Later that day, Earp telephoned her, saying the child was not breathing. She told him to call paramedics and said she would meet him at the hospital.

Earp instead fled to his mother’s house in Sacramento, where he surrendered to authorities three days later after learning that the child had died.

Earp maintains that he fled because he feared being arrested for violating parole on a 1985 burglary conviction. However, the prosecutor said Earp fled to avoid being arrested for molesting and killing the child.

Outside the courtroom, Adrienne Dell, one of Earp’s two attorneys, said she had “no doubt in my mind that he is innocent. He will be vindicated.”

Deputy Dist. Atty. Robert Foltz countered that “if any defendant ever deserved a death sentence, it was Ricky Lee Earp.”

The victim’s father, David Doshier, 40, said: “The judge did the proper thing--an eye for an eye.”

Many members of Earp’s family, including his mother, Helen Perusse, watched the sentencing without emotion. They declined comment.

Several jurors who had convicted Earp were also present.

After an eight-week trial last year, the jury found Earp guilty Dec. 2 of sexually molesting and killing the child, and two weeks later recommended that he be sentenced to death.

There were no witnesses to the beating, and the defense claimed that another man molested and killed the child. But the man denied the accusation in court and Foltz dismissed it as a defense tactic.