DENVER – A judge has sentenced a Colorado woman to 100 years in prison for cutting a nearly 8-month-old fetus from a stranger’s womb.
A jury convicted 36-year-old Dynel Lane in February of attempting to kill Michelle Wilkins in 2015. Lane, who was sentenced Friday, was also convicted of assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy. She had lured Wilkins with a Craigslist ad for maternity clothes.
Prosecutors say they were unable to charge Lane with murdering the unborn girl because a coroner found no evidence that the fetus lived outside the womb. That led Colorado Republicans to introduce legislation that would have allowed a murder charge. Democrats rejected the measure, the third time such a proposal failed in Colorado. Over the objection of abortion-rights supporters, 38 states have made a fetus’s killing a homicide.
Prosecutors say Lane was obsessed with having a baby. Her attorneys argued the assault was not a calculated murder attempt, but an impulsive act.
