A woman who attacked an expectant mother and cut her 7-month-old fetus out of her womb was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison combined on six counts.
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Matthew Jonas/AP Dynel Lane, 36, was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison.
Lane, a former nurse’s aide was found guilty in February of seven counts against her, including attempted murder and unlawful pregnancy termination.
A jury in February found Dynel Lane guilty of attempting to kill Michelle Wilkins by beating, stabbing and choking her after luring her to her home by posting an advertisement for maternity clothes on Craigslist, the online classified listings service.
Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant, survived the attack, but her unborn baby died.
She then cut out the fetus with kitchen knives, according to trial testimony.
The baby’s mother, Ms Wilkins, placed a large photograph of her dead child, who appeared to be sleeping, on an easel next to the witness box, then asked the judge to impose the harshest possible sentence.
Defense attorneys did not deny Lane’s involvement in the attack but said it was not a planned, calculated event. Lane’s lawyers tried to convince the jurors to convict their client “of the lesser charge of attempted manslaughter”. “I believe you should receive the maximum penalty because I believe that you have lost the privilege to live in our society”.
“It is clear that you need healing and I hope that you get it”, Ms Wilkins told Lane.
Wilkins’ father called Lane’s attack “savagery”, and Boulder District Judge Maria Berkenkotter called it “brutal, shocking and cruel”.
Before Lane hatched the scheme of luring a pregnant woman to her house for the goal of cutting out her fetus and claiming that the baby was hers, she had gone to great lengths to pretend that she was pregnant. They showed pictures of Lane at a baby shower and said Lane printed off ultrasound photos from the internet.
Lane declined to testify on her own behalf during the sentencing hearing but did cry when her friends and family testified about her loss of her son. “In this whole process, it’s hard to feel acknowledged because Lane in any outward sense is not taking any accountability except in the judicial process”. She has two teenage daughters, reported the Daily Camera Longmont News.
However, Democrats rejected the bill, the third time the proposal failed in Colorado.
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Wilkins, who was 26 at the time, managed to lock herself in a room and call 911. Over the objection of abortion-rights supporters, 38 states have made a fetus’s killing a homicide.
