Colorado woman gets 100 years for cutting baby from womb

A Colorado woman who was found guilty of attacking a woman seven months pregnant in order to remove her fetus was sentenced to 100 years in prison, local media reported Saturday.

Lane was convicted in February and was sentenced on Friday.

Dynel Lane sent shock-waves across the nation with the commission of her March 2015 crime, a grisly act she committed after luring her unsuspecting victim to her apartment with a Craigslist ad offering free maternity 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. David Ridley, who lived with Lane, had testified that Lane claimed she was expecting a baby boy, KABC reported. Her partner testified he came home early that day to take Lane to a doctor’s appointment and found her covered in blood, saying she’d had a miscarriage. The remainder of her sentence was for assault charges in the attack. “It is clear you need healing, and it is my honest belief that you will get it”.

She could not be sentenced for murder because there was no evidence the baby lived outside the womb. The outrage sparked Colorado Republicans to propose legislation making the crime a murder, but the measure was defeated by Democrats.

Some 38 U.S. states have made a foetus’ killing a homicide despite objections from abortion-rights supporters.

Lane was a certified nurse aide starting July 1, 2010, and her license expired on January 31, 2012, with no history of discipline or board actions, according to records with the Colorado Department of Regulatory Agencies.

Lane reportedly murmured “no” when Berkenkotter asked her if she wanted to speak.

Lane was given the maximum penalties for attempted murder and unlawful termination of a pregnancy. They showed pictures of Lane at a baby shower and said Lane printed off ultrasound photos from the internet.

“You knowingly left me to die, multiple times”, she said.

Meanwhile, Lane’s mother apologised to Wilkins in court.

Lane was arrested when she had brought the dead fetus into a hospital on the evening of the attack and claimed she had miscarried, something the doctors did not believe. At roughly the same time, a barely-alive Wilkins was rushed to LUH after she regained consciousness and was able to call police.

They did not hear that in 2002, Lane’s 19-month-old son drowned in what investigators ruled was an accident.

Lane’s court-appointed lawyers argued at the February trial that Lane did not plan the attack in advance.

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