BOULDER, Colo. — A Colorado woman was sentenced Friday to 100 years in prison for cutting a baby from a stranger’s womb.
Dynel Lane, 36, was found guilty in February on seven counts, including attempted murder and unlawful termination of a pregnancy, for which she received the maximum penalties Friday.
Judge Maria Berkenkotter said the harshest sentences for the most serious charges were justified by the brutality of the 2015 attack, which she described as performing a cesarean with a kitchen knife. Berkenkotter also said the victim, Michelle Wilkins, as well as her family and the community needed Lane to express remorse.
Lane murmured a “no” when the judge asked if she wanted to speak. Lane also did not speak in her defense during her trial.
The Longmont woman used a Craigslist ad for maternity clothes to lure Wilkins to her house in March 2015. Lane beat and stabbed Wilkins, who was seven months pregnant at the time. She was severely injured but survived. The baby did not.
Jurors had heard that Lane went to elaborate lengths to feign her own pregnancy before attacking Wilkins. They did not hear that in 2002, Lane’s 19-month-old son drowned in what investigators ruled was an accident. Relatives who spoke on Lane’s behalf before the sentencing Friday said her remorse over losing her son may have led her to take an action they could not understand or explain.
Defense attorneys did not deny Lane’s involvement in the attack but said it was not a planned, calculated event. The defense hoped the jury would find their client guilty of manslaughter.
Wilkins said after the sentencing that she saw the hearing as a day in court for her daughter, who she named Aurora.
“Judge Berkenkotter was clearly listening to everything that we were saying,” Wilkins told reporters, adding she felt justice had been served.
In court, Wilkins had directed her words to Lane, who sat straight and showed no emotion as her victim spoke. Lane cried later in the hearing when a letter from one of her two daughters expressing love was read.
Lane’s mother apologized in court to Wilkins and her family, as did her father in a letter his wife read.
Berkenkotter sentenced Lane to 48 years for attempted murder and 32 years for unlawful termination of a pregnancy. The remainder of her sentence was for assault charges in the attack. She was given credit for the more than a year she has served since her arrest.
Prosecutors said they were unable to charge Lane with murdering Wilkins’ unborn girl because a coroner found no evidence 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’ killing a homicide.
Contributing: The Associated Press
