Oklahoma Man’s Attorney Wants No Charges for Killing Unborn Child 
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by Steven Ertelt
LifeNews.com Editor
September 5, 2007
Washington, DC (LifeNews.com) — The attorney for a man charged with hitting a pregnant woman with his vehicle and killing her unborn child says the Oklahoma resident shouldn’t be charged in the case. Christopher Lee Carey is accused of hitting another vehicle carrying Renee Malcolm and killing her 16-week-old unborn child.
Carey was charged last July with two counts of assault and battery with intent to kill. Assistant District Attorney David Pierce later amended the charges to "manslaughter and DUI."
His vehicle crashed into one driven by Michael Malcolm and his daughter-in-law, Renee. Michael pulled his vehicle to the road after the accident to inspect the damage and exchange insurance information.
Instead, Carey turned around and hit Malcolm’s vehicle a second time and struck Renee. Though she was taken to a hospital, treated and released, her unborn child did not survive the incident.
Now, according to the Tahlequah Daily Press, Carey’s attorney says he shouldn’t be charged with the crime of killing the baby because the unborn child wasn’t viable at the time.
Donn Baker filed legal papers for Carey on Tuesday saying the charges should be dismissed. He contends the current law was not into effect at the time of the incident on June 6, 2006.
However, House Bill 1686, signed into law on May 20, 2005, recognizes "an unborn child" as a victim under state laws against murder, manslaughter, and certain other acts of violence.
The law defines "unborn child" as "the unborn offspring of human beings from the moment of conception, through pregnancy, and until live birth including the human conceptus, zygote, morula, blastocyst, embryo and fetus." A second, similar measure, became law May 23, 2006.
National Right to Life, which tracks such unborn victims laws, says the measure "ensures that Oklahoma’s recognition of the unborn child as a separate victim applies uniformly across all of Oklahoma’s homicide statutes."
The newspaper reports that Associate District Judge Mark Dobbins directed Carey to file the brief for him to consider and Pierce can respond to the brief with his own legal papers.
