Aug 20, 2007 2:03 pm US/Pacific
Student Faces Charges In Newborn's Death... Again
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
Prosecutors may proceed with a murder charge against a USC student accused of dumping her newborn son in a trash bin near the university, a Los Angeles Superior Court judge ruled Monday.
Following a five-minute hearing, Judge Peter Espinoza finalized his earlier tentative decision, ruling prosecutors may reinstate the murder charge against Holly Ashcraft.
The murder charge has twice been dismissed by different judges.
Ashcraft, who was suspended by the university pending the outcome of her case, is due back in court Tuesday for a preliminary hearing.
"It's unfortunate but we're gonna go forward," her attorney Mark Geragos said after the hearing. "(We) look forward to getting it dismissed once and for all."
Prosecutors contend the baby -- whose body was found by a homeless man in October 2005 while sifting through a trash bin behind the 29th Street Cafe, a popular USC hangout -- was born alive.
Geragos has countered that there was no evidence the baby had been born alive.
The murder charge against Ashcraft was first dismissed in March, with Los Angeles Superior Court Judge David Wesley ruling that the evidence supported only the lesser charge of involuntary manslaughter and child abuse leading to death.
Deputy District Attorney Franco Baratta asked to have the entire case dismissed and quickly refiled the murder charge following Wesley's decision.
In June, Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Samuel Mayerson ruled prosecutors could not proceed with a murder case against Ashcraft because the previous judge had ordered that she stand trial on the involuntary manslaughter
charge.
Following Mayerson's dismissal, prosecutors filed court papers seeking to have the murder charge reinstated.
Geragos contends that prosecutors have reached the maximum number of dismissals in the case -- two -- allowable under state law.
But, in his tentative order issued earlier this month, Espinoza wrote that "because the murder charge was not 'repeatedly' filed by the people and repeatedly 'dismissed,' but was instead filed only once by the people in the
first complaint, the people's refiling of the murder count in the second complaint was proper and within their rights ... "
Ashcraft, a 22-year-old Billings, Mont., native is free on $200,000 bail.
Ashcraft was first investigated by police in April 2004, when she arrived bleeding at a downtown hospital and doctors determined she had given birth.
The architecture student claimed she had given birth to a stillborn, but the baby's body was never found and she was never arrested or charged in connection with that infant.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
