Prosecutors on Wednesday asked a Texas jury to sentence to death Taylor Parker, a woman who killed a pregnant woman to steal her unborn daughter from the womb.

Prosecutors on Wednesday asked a Texas jury to sentence a woman to death for killing a pregnant woman to steal her unborn child from the womb.

The appeal came as the sentencing phase of Taylor Parker’s capital murder trial began following the October 2020 killing of Reagan Simmons-Hancock and the theft of her unborn baby.

The Bowie County jury previously found Parker guilty of capital murder.

Prosecutor Kelley Crisp told the jury the evidence would show that Parker, 29, faked a pregnancy and lied repeatedly before killing Simmons-Hancock, 21, at the woman’s New Boston home on March 3. October 2020, to “get back” the baby she claimed to have had.

The boy died on October 9 at a hospital near Idabel, Oklahoma.

Parker’s attorneys hope to persuade the jury to spare Parker’s life and let her serve life in prison without the possibility of parole.

Defense attorney Jeff Harrelson said they would prove Parker was mentally ill.

During the trial, the defense requested that the charge of capital murder by kidnapping, which could carry a death penalty, be dismissed, since in their opinion the state criminal code on kidnapping requires that the fetus be born alive.

The lawyers’ argument is that the creature was not breathing when removed from the womb. Prosecutors maintain the opposite: that he was later pronounced dead at a hospital in Idabel, Oklahoma. The judge dismissed the defense request.

Death penalty in Texas

In the following days the verdict will be known and if Taylor Parker will face the death penalty; It should be remembered that in Texas there are 9 capital crimes, which are paid with life.

Between 1819 and 1923 Texas counties executed people by hanging. In 1923 the state of Texas assumed responsibility for the executions. Between 1923 and 1964 the state of Texas executed people with the electric chair.

Since 1977 the state has used lethal injection. He previously used three drugs in his lethal injection: sodium thiopentete, pancuronium bromide, and potassium chloride.

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