A judge in Colorado has sentenced a woman to 100 years in prison for cutting an eight-month-old baby from a stranger’s womb with kitchen knives, local media reported.
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Former nurse’s aide Dynel Lane, 35, attacked Michelle Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant and had responded to Lane’s online ad for maternity and baby clothes.
The unborn baby girl died but Wilkins miraculously survived – and was in the courtroom as the judge handed down the stiff sentence.
Lane was formally convicted last February of first-degree attempted murder and unlawful termination of a pregnancy by a Boulder County jury during a trial where prosecutors told the court she spent months faking her pregnancy.
During the trial, Lane’s attorney did not deny the fetus was cut out of Wilkins by the defendant, but claimed the attack was unplanned and in self-defense.
According to the prosecutors, the convict could not be charged with the murder of the baby because there was no evidence the fetus lived outside the womb. A friend read a letter from Lane’s older daughter than said her mom did wrong but “I still love you”.
The remainder 20 years of her sentence was for assault charges in the attack.
He testified that he had believed her, and they had planned to call the boy “James”.
Ridley came home and found the dying fetus in the bathtub; subsequently, he drove both Lane and the unborn baby to emergencies.
Concluding her statement, Wilkins supported the idea that Lane receive the maximum penalty as she believe that Lane has “lost the privilege to live in our society”.
Lane hit Ms Wilkins over the head with a lava lamp and stabbed her in the neck with the broken glass.
Prosecutors’ inability to charge Lane with murdering Wilkins’ baby prompted Colorado Republicans to introduce legislation that would have allowed a murder charge. She regained consciousness and used a towel to try to stop herself from bleeding to death. She added her daughter’s desperation to have another child “caused her to make this choice”.
Ms Wilkins spoke to her attacker in court in Friday, in front of a photograph of her dead baby on an easel next to the witness stand.
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An emergency room surgeon who attended to her noticed that the incision on her abdomen was “well performed”, according to a police report. “It’s hard to imagine anyone would do this”, Judge Berkenkotter said. Wilkins told Lane that making the fantasy become real, to her, “was more important than my right to live and Aurora’s right to live”. Lane had been convicted back in May, but the sentencing stage was a lengthy one.
