State Judge Rejects Murder Retrial

A judge has rejected a claim by an attorney for condemned child-killer Dacarius Holliday that an East Baton Rouge Parish jury was "duped" last year into believing 2-year-old Darian Coon was sexually abused when he was beaten to death in 2007.

Richard Bourke, who is handling Holliday's appeal, argued to state District Judge Wilson Fields that the defense has evidence that contradicts trial testimony that Coon was sexually assaulted.

Prosecutors countered during a 90-minute hearing Tuesday that the state stands by its trial witnesses.

Fields denied Holliday's motion for a new trial.

Holliday was convicted March 14, 2010, of first-degree murder in the fatal beating of Coon and sentenced to die by lethal injection.