Inmate’s Bid for a Hearing Upheld

A federal appeals court on Friday paved the way for Ricky Lee Earp, who has been on death row since 1992, to get a hearing on his claims that a Los Angeles County prosecutor intimidated a witness whose testimony could have aided him in avoiding a conviction and death sentence for the rape and murder of his goddaughter.

The U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reaffirmed a decision it rendered in early September saying that Earp was entitled to a hearing on two claims: prosecutorial misconduct and constitutionally ineffective representation by his trial lawyer.

Earp, who is now 45, was convicted in 1991 of raping and murdering his 18-month-old goddaughter, Amanda Doshier.

Earp’s girlfriend had left Amanda with him when she went to work one day in August 1988. Hours later, Earp called paramedics for help, saying Amanda had fallen. She died in a hospital two days later.

Earp later said another man, Dennis Morgan, had come to the house in Palmdale and killed the girl. But Morgan testified that he had never been to the house.

In one of his appellate court claims, Earp alleged that the trial prosecutor from the county district attorney’s office had committed prejudicial misconduct by dissuading Michael Taylor, who had been a jail mate of Morgan’s, from testifying.

Taylor had submitted a declaration stating that he had overheard Morgan say he had visited the house where Earp was watching the child on the day of the murder. Taylor said the prosecutor verbally abused him until he retracted his statement.

Earp’s appellate attorneys also alleged that his trial lawyer failed to investigate leads that could have yielded mitigating evidence in the trial’s penalty phase about his childhood emotional and neurological problems. The lawyers, Dean R. Gitts of the federal public defender’s office and Robert S. Gerstein of Santa Monica, cited a history of alcoholism, depression and suicide in Earp’s family and “evaluations that would have evinced organic brain damage resulting from head trauma sustained in childhood.”

The state attorney general’s office sought a rehearing but did not get the required majority vote of the 9th Circuit.