By Kim Minugh
kminugh@sacbee.com
A Sacramento Superior Court judge sentenced a 32-year-old man to 50-years-to-life imprisonment today for killing his girlfriend's unborn baby by stabbing her in the stomach.
That's after Danny Ray Poplin Jr. serves 12 years for corporal injury and assault with a deadly weapon in connection with his Dec. 31, 2006 attack, Judge Greta Curtis Fall ruled.
In November, a jury found Poplin guilty of first-degree murder in the death of his girlfriend's baby, which he suspected to have been that of another man. It wasn't until DNA tests returned before trial that he knew it was, in fact, his own. His girlfriend was about six months pregnant.
His girlfriend, 28-year-old Vanessa Roberts, survived the stabbing and was in court today to watch the sentencing.
The first-degree murder charge carried a sentence of 25 years to life, a term then doubled because of a prior "strike" conviction: In 1996, Poplin was pleaded guilty to a felony count of first-degree burglary.
At the request of Poplin's defense attorney - and with no objection from the prosecution - Fall also agreed to recommend that Poplin, who is deaf, be housed at a special needs facility run by the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation.
Call The Bee's Kim Minugh, (916) 321-1038.
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