Baltimore County jurors needed less than an hour yesterday to convict a married Parkville man of killing a pregnant woman and the pair's unborn baby on a shopping center parking lot in June - the first time Maryland's fetal homicide law has been used to charge someone in the death of an unborn child.
David L. Miller, 25, hung his head as guilty verdicts were read yesterday afternoon.
Across the courtroom, friends and family members of Elizabeth Walters wiped away tears and quietly hugged one another.
The victim's father, Don Walters, reached back and squeezed the hand of one of his daughter's closest friends - a woman who had moved with Liz Walters into a larger apartment in Baltimore so that the baby would have her own room.
Miller was convicted of first-degree murder for killing the pregnant woman but also attempted first-degree murder for shooting her best friend.
That woman, Heather Lowe, drove Walters to the defendant's Parkville home June 11 so that the pregnant woman could try to speak to him about the baby.
"There's no place in this society for someone who does something like this - no place - to two innocent women and a baby," Don Walters of Rosedale said outside the courthouse yesterday afternoon.
Prosecutors will ask Baltimore County Circuit Judge Dana M. Levitz to sentence Miller to life in prison without the possibility of parole at a hearing in July.
Defense attorney Alvin Alston said he will ask for something less.
A state medical examiner and Walters' obstetrician testified that she was about 32 weeks along in her pregnancy. A full-term pregnancy lasts 40 weeks.
Baltimore County State's Attorney Scott D. Shellenberger, who prosecuted the case, said it offered a perfect opportunity to use the state's 2 1/2 -year-old fetal homicide law.
"Liz was so far along in her pregnancy and, equally important, the defendant knew she was pregnant," he said in an interview after the case wrapped up. "Frankly, the motive for the murder was the pregnancy."
Several other states have laws similar to the one enacted in Maryland in October 2005.
In perhaps the most famous use of such a law, California prosecutors charged Scott Peterson in the 2002 deaths of his wife, Laci, and their unborn son in Modesto, Calif., one month before she was due to give birth.
