Girl in Trouble

While Cornwell worked on her legal case, Owen's behavior continued in a destructive pattern. She was arrested twice for drunken driving while out on bail. Each time, she blew higher than a 0.2 on a Breathalyzer. (The legal limit in Kansas is 0.08.) Her case was slipping away. "I told Aubrey, 'Maybe you really need to be on your best behavior here,'" Cornwell says.

But Assistant District Attorney Chris McMullin wanted her sent to prison.

"When you talk about a harsh sentence, that's 20 years," McMullin tells the Pitch. "Nobody was there in support of the baby, that's for sure, other than myself and the people with me.... I would have slept at night if she had gotten 10 years in prison."

As Cornwell weighed the evidence against Owen, she walked into his office to report a surprise.

She was pregnant again.

Six months after Izabella was born, Owen met Mark Huston at a barbecue in Lawrence. They fell in love.

"I could tell she was kind of in despair and needed somebody to understand her and be in her corner that wasn't already tied to everything," Huston says. "It all just kind of grew from there."

Owen had withdrawn from K-State and was living at home in Olathe when she found out that she and Huston were going to have a baby.

Rebecca was mad at first. She told Owen that she had just blown her legal case.

But Owen was thrilled. "She said, 'I guess I'm supposed to be a mom, Mom,'" Rebecca says.

Eventually, Rebecca decided to make the best of the situation. "I said, 'OK, for once in your life, you're going to experience a healthy pregnancy and all the joy that you missed by not telling anybody.' The fun little stuff of it that she never got to enjoy. And we did. The first time we went to look for baby clothes, it was so much fun. We went to Burlington Coat Factory here at the Great Mall. You see the strollers and you see the cribs and you see all this stuff, the little booties. And I never knew that Aubrey was ever into feet at all, but baby feet? Oh, if it's a booty or a little shoe, she would just squeal and go, 'Oh, my God, this is so cute!'"

Owen also told her counselors about the new pregnancy. She said she felt blessed. Michele Paynter, a clinical coordinator at the Metropolitan Organization to Counter Sexual Assault, whom Owen began seeing about a year after her arrest, wrote in court documents: "The client beamed with excitement. Her specialist expressed concerns upon her rape case, and how potential jurors would view this recent development. The client was overwhelmingly happy, and didn't seem concerned about the matter."

But it killed the case. If they'd gone to trial, Cornwell notes, Owen would have walked into court each day nearly nine months pregnant. The county returned with a new offer — this time five years instead of four — if Owen pleaded no contest.

Owen was seven months pregnant when she agreed to the plea on August 18, 2005. Her sentencing hearing was delayed so that she could give birth and have a few weeks to bond with her daughter. Alexis was born on October 3.

At Owens' November 17 sentencing, family members and friends pleaded for District Judge Thomas Bornholdt to show mercy. As a condition to speak, everyone who stood on Owen's behalf, including her mother and father, had to concede that Owen deserved to go away, Cornwell tells the Pitch.

So each of Owen's supporters hesitantly agreed that she deserved the terms of the plea agreement: five years in prison for unintentional second-degree murder.

Bornholdt handed down the full five years.

In the visiting room at the Topeka Correctional Facility, a couple of dozen small tables are surrounded by blue plastic chairs. Relatives line up at the vending machines to buy their incarcerated family members Cokes and sandwiches. Others huddle around their tables playing cards and talking quietly. Kids run around the room laughing.

Owen is allowed to see Huston and their daughter, Alexis, on Saturdays and Sundays for six-hour visits. On the weekend before Mother's Day, Owen wears jeans and a white sweatshirt. Her eyes light up as her mother hobbles into the room; Rebecca sprained her ankle in a fall earlier in the week.