Texas Dumpster Mom Receives 20 Years In Prison
FORT WORTH -- A college student convicted of trying to smother her newborn in plastic bags and dumping him in a trash bin was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison.
Dana Wilson, 25, was stoic Friday afternoon -- as she had been throughout the weeklong trial -- as Judge Elizabeth Berry read the punishment imposed by a Tarrant County jury of seven women and five men.
On Thursday, the jury convicted Wilson of attempted capital murder for trying to kill Christopher Dale Reichard on Nov. 14, 2003, the day she gave birth alone in a bathroom at her Hurst home.
Her next act proved pivotal in persuading jurors to convict her, prosecutors said. Wilson stuffed her baby into a plastic shopping bag and tied it shut. She placed that bag inside a black yard trash bag -- already containing food wrappers and other discarded items -- and knotted that bag shut.
She then drove to a trash bin near a Hurst animal clinic and dumped her son, according to testimony. A veterinarian and his technician found Christopher a few minutes later.
By then, according to testimony, oxygen deprivation and blood loss had left the infant mentally retarded. He has since developed cerebral palsy.
The jury deliberated almost three hours Friday before sentencing Wilson to prison instead of probation, which her attorney had argued for during his closing argument.
"I would still have given Dana a chance through probation," defense attorney Ward Maedgen of Dallas said after the sentence was announced.
Prosecutors had pressed for life in prison, the maximum sentence for attempted capital murder.
The jury "felt 20 years was appropriate, and we're pleased with it," said Phelesa Guy, a Tarrant County assistant district attorney. "We would have preferred more."
Wilson will be eligible for parole after serving 10 years, prosecutors said.
Jurors could not be reached Friday.
On Friday morning, prosecutors told jurors that Wilson should be sentenced to life in prison because she had given her baby a life sentence. He is in the custody of his paternal grandparents in Austin.
Guy told jurors that during a summer 2003 appointment, just weeks before Christopher was born, Wilson's doctor had recommended that she put the child up for adoption.
"She felt it was her right to throw her baby away. She didn't want him; she hated him," Guy said during closing arguments. "What did he do to deserve all that? Nothing."
Earlier in the week, Maedgen had told jurors that Wilson suffers from a severe mental illness and has an IQ of 80, just above being mentally retarded.
Because of Wilson's learning disabilities, her mother, Delbra Wilson, had completed many of her daughter's homework assignments from L.D. Bell High School and Texas Wesleyan University in Fort Worth, Delbra Wilson testified.
Dana Wilson became pregnant in early 2003 after meeting a man through an Internet dating service, police said. Wilson did not tell her mother, with whom she lived.
After giving birth and dumping her baby in a trash bin, Dana Wilson drove to Texas Wesleyan for a class. She left campus after a classmate told her she needed to go home after having a baby. She later drove past the trash bin where she'd dropped the baby and saw police investigating the scene.
Acting on tips, Hurst police arrested Dana Wilson a few days after her baby was discovered.
Delbra Wilson is a former judge in Tarrant County. While working in Tarrant County, she presided over hearings concerning paternity and enforcement of child-support payments, county officials have said.
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