According to a criminal complaint, Roger Holland stands accused of strangling his pregnant wife at their town house and trying to make it look like Margorie Holland died when she accidentally fell down a staircase. Her unborn baby also died last March.
If convicted of his wife’s murder, Holland faces life in prison. But the murder of an unborn child also carries a sentence of up to life in prison.
Remarkably, Holland’s attorney has filed a “novel” motion. According to the St. Paul Pioneer Press’s Marino Eccher, attorney Marsh Halberg is arguing that “The death of the fetus was an abortion, not a murder, and the only person whose rights that such an act could have violated — the mother — already was dead.”
