Leniency plea made in baby’s death

Bill Gang

Tuesday, Feb. 1, 2000 | 10:40 a.m.

Three years ago Lawrence Motti was a hero, but his life took an ugly and violent downward turn.

Now he is headed to prison to spend six to 26 years for the child abuse death of his 1-month-old daughter.

Motti said in court Monday that he doesn't know what happened the day his daughter suffered a fractured skull.

"I would never have hurt my child. I could never have killed my child," he said as he pleaded with District Judge Kathy Hardcastle for leniency. "She was the light of my life that was put out."

But Deputy District Attorney Doug Herndon noted that there were several bite marks on the abdomen of Frances Motti that were matched to the 30-year-old father through comparisons with his teeth.

There also was a November arrest on domestic violence charges. The judge in pronouncing the sentence said a good father wouldn't bite his infant daughter and a nonviolent man wouldn't be facing domestic battery charges.

Motti pleaded guilty last year to child abuse and voluntary manslaughter but did so under a legal provision that does not require him to admit responsibility for the crime.

In addition to his claim that he doesn't know what caused his daughter's death, Motti admitted that part of his reason for accepting the plea bargain was to avoid the possibility of a mandatory life prison sentence and no parole for 20 years should he be convicted of first-degree murder.

Herndon had agreed to the plea bargain because he believed the baby's fatal head injury may have been the result of a "sudden outburst of anger" that could qualify the death as a voluntary manslaughter.

The prosecutor added that difficulty in getting doctors to commit to appear at a trial to testify also contributed to the negotiated end to the case.

But that was before the domestic violence arrest.

Motti originally claimed the fatal head injury on Jan. 7, 1997, occurred when one of his two sons -- then ages 2 and 3 -- pulled the infant out of a swing and she hit her head on a fireplace hearth.

Prosecution doctors determined the injury could not have happened that way.

Those doctors also contradicted a defense doctor who said the baby had what Deputy Public Defender Will Ewing termed a "vascular malfunction in her brain" that could have facilitated the death.

The baby's death occurred almost a year after Motti, a Sahara hotel-casino security guard, was praised as a hero in the shooting death of a man who had just killed his ex-wife in the resort's employee parking lot.

Motti and another guard witnessed 56-year-old Gordon Bishop shoot Ruthie Green-Bishop, 45, then turn the gun toward the guards. Motti fired five shots and killed Bishop.

A few months later Motti gave up that job and was divorced from his wife.