Aug 9, 2007 3:52 pm US/Pacific
USC Student May Be Charged With Murder...Again
LOS ANGELES (CBS) ―
A judge tentatively granted a prosecution motion to reinstate a murder charge against a suspended USC student whose newborn son was found dead in a trash bin near the university in October 2005.
Los Angeles Superior Court Judge Peter Espinoza said he would give Holly Ashcraft's attorney, Mark Geragos, time to respond in writing to the tentative order and set an Aug. 20 hearing, at which the judge is expected to announce a final decision.
"It would not be the first time someone's tentatively ruled against us," Geragos said outside court.
Superior Court Judge Samuel Mayerson initially denied the defense's request to dismiss the murder charge on June 11, then reversed course and agreed one day later with Geragos' contention that prosecutors had reached the maximum number of dismissals in the case -- two -- allowable under state law.
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.
Ashcraft's attorney· argued that although the dismissed murder and involuntary manslaughter counts were technically different charges, they involved the "same underlying facts" and accounted for the two allowable charges that can be dismissed in a case.
The prosecutor countered at the June hearing that he considered Wesley's ruling that the case supported only an involuntary manslaughter charge to be an "invitation" for the prosecution to file that charge.
Citing a minute order of Wesley's ruling, Mayerson said his interpretation was that the judge had ordered Ashcraft to stand trial on the involuntary manslaughter charge. Mayerson noted that it was "not advisory," but "an order."
Following Mayerson's dismissal of the murder charge, prosecutors filed court papers seeking to have the murder charge reinstated.
"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 refilling of the murder count in the second complaint was proper and within their rights ..." Espinoza wrote in his tentative order.
Ashcraft, a 22-year-old Billings, Mont., native, is free on $200,000 bail.
Prosecutors contend the baby -- whose body was found by a homeless man sifting through a trash bin behind a bar-restaurant that is a popular hangout for USC students -- was born alive.
Geragos has countered that there was no evidence Ashcraft knew she was pregnant or that the baby had been born alive.
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.
Ashcraft was suspended from USC pending the outcome of the case, according to her attorney.
(© 2007 CBS Broadcasting Inc. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten, or redistributed. The Associated Press contributed to this report.)
