NC high court dumps murder retrial over rough diaper change

RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) - A Wake County man should remain in prison for life without parole because it just wasn't believable that the sexual abuse suffered by the 10-month-old he killed could have come from a rough diaper change, the North Carolina Supreme Court ruled Friday.

The court's opinion rejecting Joshua Stepp's bid for a new trial came quickly: less than two weeks after the justices heard arguments in the case.

The Supreme Court overturned a lower appeals court's decision one year ago that Stepp should have been allowed to argue that some of his stepdaughter's injuries resulted not from sexual abuse but because he aggressively cleaned her during a diaper change. The jury's decision that Stepp sexually abused the girl led to his conviction for first-degree murder instead of second-degree murder.

The high court said that it was persuaded by a dissenting opinion in the state Court of Appeals that it was implausible that Stepp's diaper cleanup, however rough, was an accepted medical purpose.

Stepp was convicted of killing Cheyenne Yarley in 2009. Evidence showed the girl suffered second-degree rug burns, was shaken so violently that her brain and retinas were bleeding, and gagged on wet toilet paper put in her mouth to silence her screams.

Cheyenne had been left in Stepp's care by her mother, who was working a night shift at Fort Bragg. Stepp abused alcohol and prescription drugs to deal with having to pick up body parts of fellow soldiers after they were killed in Iraq, defense attorneys said.