US woman gets 100 years for unborn baby murder
A woman in the US state of Colorado has been sentenced to 100 years in prison for cutting an unborn baby from its mother's womb with kitchen knives.
The ruling was made on Friday in the aftermath of an assault that occurred in March 2015, when Dynel Lane, 36, brutally attacked Michelle Wilkins in the city of Longmont, about 40 miles north of Denver, Colorado.
Reports said Wilkins, who was nearly eight months pregnant at the time, had responded to Lane's online advertisement for maternity and baby clothes.
According to prosecutors, when the victim came to Lane's house in Longmont to look at baby clothes in the basement, the two chatted for some time and after that Lane, with two kitchen knives, beat and stabbed her, and tried to choke and smother her before cutting her uterus and removing the fetus.
She left Wilkins on the floor unconscious while she took the baby to a hospital, claiming she had suffered a miscarriage.
Wilkins later regained consciousness and managed to call police.
“You knowingly left me to die multiple times,” Wilkins told her attacker in a victim impact statement on Friday.
“The only tears you shed during the trial were those of self-pity, to the sound of your own voice as your lies were slowly revealed. Yet even now you cannot come clean about what actually occurred. You embrace your narcissistic fantasy to fulfill the lie you created and it was more important than my right to live and Aurora's right to live,” she continued.
"I believe you should receive the maximum penalty because I believe that you have lost the privilege to live in our society," Wilkins added.
Expressing no remorse for the assault, Lane admitted cutting the unborn baby out of Wilkins' womb, but told police Wilkins attacked her and she fought back in self-defense. Lane said she was afraid she had killed Wilkins during the struggle and removed the baby in an attempt to save it.
The court sentenced Lane to 48 years for attempted murder and 32 years for unlawful termination of a pregnancy. The remainder 20 years of her sentence was for assault charges in the attack.
Prosecutors did not pursue a murder charge for the unborn child. Colorado state law does not recognize a fetus as a person unless it is capable of surviving for a period of time outside the womb, a prosecutor said before trial.
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