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| Photo Credit: AP. |
NEW BOSTON, Texas (AP) — Prosecutors asked a Texas jury Wednesday to sentence a woman to death for killing a pregnant woman and stealing her unborn daughter from her womb.
The appeal
came as the penalty phase of Taylor Parker’s capital murder trial began for the
October 2020 murder of Reagan Simmons-Hancock and theft of her unborn baby. The
Bowie County jury previously found Parker guilty of capital murder.
Prosecutor
Kelley Crisp told jurors that the evidence would show Parker, 29, faked a
pregnancy and repeatedly lied before killing Simmons-Hancock, 21, at the
woman’s New Boston home on Oct. 9, 2020, to get the infant she claimed to have
been carrying. The baby also died.
Parker’s
attorneys hope to persuade the jury to spare Parker’s life and let her serve
life imprisonment without the possibility of parole. Defense attorney Jeff
Harrelson said they would show that Parker was mentally ill.
This story
has been corrected to show Reagan Simmons-Hancock died Oct. 9, 2020.