Mother-To-Be Stabbing Trial: Defense Says Attack Unplanned
BOULDER, Colo. (AP) — The Latest on the trial of a woman charged with cutting a stranger's unborn baby from her womb:
10:21 a.m.
A defense attorney for a woman accused of cutting an unborn baby from a stranger's womb says her client didn't plan the attack and never intended to kill the expectant mother.
Attorney Jennifer Beck said during opening statements Wednesday that evidence shows Dynel Lane didn't know what to do after the attack on Michelle Wilkins.
Wilkins survived but her unborn baby did not.
Beck says Lane and Wilkins chatted about motherhood, their partners, pregnancies and other things for more than an hour.
Beck says the attack was chaotic and frantic.
9:41 a.m.
Prosecutors say a woman accused of cutting an unborn baby from a stranger's womb was obsessed with pregnancy, taking elaborate measures to convince friends and family she was expecting.
During opening statements Wednesday, District Attorney Stan Garnett said Dynel Lane wasn't pregnant but posted online photos of herself with a distended belly and claimed for more than a year she was having a boy.
Garnett says Lane's friends even threw her a baby shower.
Victim Michelle Wilkins didn't know Lane wasn't pregnant when she responded to Lane's Craigslist ad for maternity and baby clothes. Garnett says Lane hit Wilkins with a lamp, stabbed her with broken glass and used kitchen knives to cut the unborn baby girl from Wilkins' womb.
8:51 a.m.
Dynel Lane has entered a Boulder courtroom for her trial on charges of cutting open a pregnant woman's belly and taking her baby.
Lane wore a gray pantsuit and a blue button-down shirt and wasn't handcuffed as she waited for opening statements to get underway Wednesday.
Lane walked calmly to the defense table and took a seat next to her attorneys.
Prosecutors charged her with attempted first-degree murder, assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy in the March 2015 attack.
Lane pleaded not guilty, but her attorneys have not revealed much about her defense.
12:30 a.m.
A trial is set to start for a Colorado woman accused of cutting a stranger's unborn baby from her womb, a gruesome case that reignited the debate over the legal rights of fetuses.
Opening statements are expected Wednesday morning in the trial of 35-year-old Dynel Lane. Prosecutors charged her with attempted first-degree murder, assault and unlawful termination of a pregnancy in the March 2015 attack. But District Attorney Stan Garnett said he could not charge Lane with murder because a coroner found no evidence the fetus lived outside the womb. That prompted Colorado Republicans to introduce legislation that would have allowed prosecutors to file murder charges for killing a fetus, but Democrats rejected the measure.
Lane pleaded not guilty, but her attorneys have not revealed much about her defense.
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