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LOS ANGELES (CNS) - A state appeals court panel Monday rejected a bid for re-sentencing from a man who pleaded guilty to murdering a Cal State Northridge student just over four decades ago.
The three-justice panel from California's 2nd District Court of Appeal noted that Edmond Jay Marr does not meet the statutory requirement for re- sentencing in Elaine Graham's killing.
The panel noted that a Los Angeles County Superior Court judge had rejected the 66-year-old defendant's petition for re-sentencing, with the defendant contending that the judge who sentenced him in 2005 to 16 years to life in state prison did not consider "health conditions resulting from petitioner's military service as a factor in deciding the sentence."
Marr -- whom a prosecutor said was dishonorably discharged from the U.S. Army in 1983 -- pleaded guilty in March 2005 to second-degree murder and admitted a knife-use allegation as jury selection was set to begin in his trial.
Graham, who lived in Sherman Oaks with her husband and daughter, disappeared on St. Patrick's Day 1983 after dropping off her 2-year-old girl at a babysitter's home and leaving for classes.
The 29-year-old woman's 1971 Volkswagen was found a few days later, abandoned in the parking lot of a Santa Ana mall.
Eight months after she disappeared, hikers found Graham's skeletal remains in a remote area of Brown's Canyon in Chatsworth. Pathologists determined that she had been stabbed to death.
Marr, who was 25 at the time, came to the attention of detectives when they learned that he had been near the Northridge campus the day Graham disappeared and had shown up at his sister's home in Santa Ana that night.
He was questioned by homicide detectives, but it would be two decades before a case would be filed.
Police had found a double-edged dagger when Marr was arrested on suspicion of robbery in April 1983 in Westminster.
Investigators determined there was blood on the dagger that was consistent with Graham's blood type. Forensic technology advances in the ensuing years helped investigators build their case against Marr, who was arrested in February 2003 outside his home near Palm Springs.
At Marr's sentencing, the victim's daughter, Elyse, told the defendant, "You've given me a life sentence of a broken heart ... You took from me the most important person in the world."
In 2006, a state appeals court panel rejected Marr's claim that his constitutional rights were violated by a search of a bag of belongings he had asked a police officer to retrieve from some nearby bushes after his April 1983 arrest in Westminster, finding that the defendant had "no reasonable expectation of privacy in the contents of his bag" once the officer took custody of it at his request.