California Prosecutors Want to Force Plea on Accused Sandra Cantu Killer

June 10, 2009— -- Prosecutors say the former Sunday school teacher accused of raping and murdering 8-year-old Sandra Cantu has been given enough time to enter a plea.

Court documents filed Tuesday in San Joaquin Superior Court in Stockton, Calif., detail the prosecution's request for the court to enter a plea on behalf of Melissa Huckaby if she again refuses to enter a plea herself at Friday's hearing.

Huckaby has declined to enter a plea at three previous court hearings since her April 10 arrest, effectively freezing her case at the arraignment stage. Huckaby's public defender requested the latest continuation May 22 after the district attorney's office announced a slew of new charges, including the alleged poisonings of a 7-year-old child and an adult man.

Public defender Sam Behar told the judge last month that he had received 1,000 pages of evidence the day before his client's latest appearance and was not yet ready to move on to the next phase.

Behar told ABCNews.com today that he had no response to the district attorney's motion.

Because two of Huckaby's alleged victims were children, Deputy District Attorney Thomas Testa, in requesting the court to force the defense to move forward, cited a California penal code provision that allowed the court to give preference to the victims if they were minors.

Once a plea is entered, the court can then schedule a preliminary hearing, something the district attorney's office requested in the same filing.

The primary and most damning charges against Huckaby involve the murder of Sandra Cantu, a second-grader whose body was found April 6 stuffed into a suitcase in an irrigation pond 10 days after she disappeared from the Orchard Estates Mobile Home Park in Tracy, Calif.

The murder charge also included the special circumstances of kidnapping, lewd and lascivious acts with a child and rape with a foreign object, making her eligible for the death penalty, if convicted.

Huckaby, who lived with her grandparents and 5-year-old daughter, was a neighbor of Sandra's family in the mobile home park. Her grandfather is the pastor of a nearby church, which authorities searched in the days leading up to Huckaby's arrest.