Woman Gets 100 Years for Cutting Baby From Womb

She didn't express remorse for horrific attack
By Newser Editors and Wire Services
Posted Apr 30, 2016 6:57 AM CDT
Woman Gets 100 Years for Cutting Baby From Womb
Michelle Wilkins stands with her parents following the sentencing hearing.   (Brennan Linsley)

A judge sentenced a Colorado woman who cut a baby from a stranger's womb to 100 years in prison, including the maximum penalties for attempted murder and unlawful termination of a pregnancy. Judge Maria Berkenkotter said the sentences were justified by the brutality of the 2015 attack, which she described as performing a cesarean with a kitchen knife. She also said the victim, Michelle Wilkins, as well as her family and the community needed Dynel Lane, 36, to express remorse. Lane murmured a "no" when the judge asked if she wanted to speak Friday. Lane also did not speak in her defense during her trial, which ended in February when jurors found her guilty of attempting to kill Wilkins after luring her victim to her home with an ad for maternity clothes.

Jurors had heard that Lane, who has two daughters 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 sentencing said her remorse over losing her son may have led her to take an action they could not understand or explain, the AP reports. 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. Lane's mother apologized in court to Wilkins and her family, as did her father in a letter his wife read. (Someone who knew Lane wrote a troubling Facebook post weeks before the attack.)

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