NEWS
11 News Exclusive - Cheyenne Corbett: Her Story - Facing Charges
Lisa McDivitt
GRAND JUNCTION, Colo. (KKCO) - For a teenage girl who prided herself on never getting in trouble, Cheyenne Corbett worked herself into a situation with devastating consequences.
In the early morning hours of July 22, 2006, 17–year–old Cheyenne gave birth to a healthy baby girl in the shower of her parent's home.
"There was a lot of blood. Blood everywhere. And she was there. And her eyes were closed,” says Cheyenne. “And I'll always wonder what color her eyes were. Because her dad had pretty eyes."
The coroner's report would later reveal the baby girl had brown, wavy hair, and brown eyes.
"She looked just like me when I was a baby,” Cheyenne says.
Cheyenne says after losing consciousness for a while, when she came to, she thought her baby was dead.
"She wasn't breathing, she wasn't moving. I mean, this isn't what I was expecting. I panicked."
Suzanne Pinto is the forensic psychologist who evaluated Cheyenne. She says Cheyenne honestly believed her baby was dead, and because the teen had lost a lot of blood during the delivery, she wasn't thinking clearly.
"You become confused, you become disoriented. And this is why women have babies in the hospital," says Pinto.
Cheyenne wrapped the baby's body in a towel, and hid it in the entertainment center of her room. Hours later, after her mother found her passed out and Cheyenne was taken to the hospital.
Even there, she withheld information from some ER doctors, trying desperately to keep her mom in the dark.
"I'm still trying to hide it from my mother,” says Cheyenne. “Still trying to hide it from my mom. That's how much it scared me to tell her."
"She was a very young, naïve, depressed and frightened girl," says Pinto.
According to the coroner's report, Cheyenne killed her daughter. Being wrapped in towels ended up suffocating the newborn, and her death was ruled a homicide.
Tammy Eret prosecuted the case for the Mesa County District Attorney's office. She says that based on police reports and statements from people who knew Cheyenne, Cheyenne knowingly and intentionally killed her baby.
"It was a baby that was breathing... that she wrapped in a towel and stuck in a TV cabinet," says Eret. "I don't think Cheyenne just didn't know or didn't connect. I think it was inconvenient.”
Cheyenne was charged as an adult for first degree murder.
In Colorado, the elected district attorney has the power to decide to charge juveniles as adults. Cheyenne is one of 21 teenagers to have ever been charged as an adult in Mesa County, and the only one to be given a Department of Corrections sentence, according to the minutes of a 2008 Direct File Subcommittee meeting of the Commission on Criminal and Juvenile Justice.
Eret says reasons why are because Cheyenne was almost 18 at the time, and the crime was severe enough to warrant the charge and the sentence.
"Do I think she murdered her child? Yeah, I do,” says Eret. “I don't think if Cheyenne gets out, is she going to kill somebody again? No. Do I think she needed to pay and be punished for what she did? Absolutely."
Cheyenne then had two choices: go to trial on first degree murder charges and face life in prison without parole if found guilty, or plead guilty to child abuse resulting in death and get a lesser sentence.
Ken Singer was one of Cheyenne's attorneys. He says trial wasn't an option. "We can't forget that she's a child,” says Singer. “She's 16, 17 years of age. She's never been in trouble before in her life."
Pinto adds, "Is she a sophisticated 17 year old gong on 40? No. She's a 17–year–old going on 15, emotionally."
Singer wanted Cheyenne to get a Youthful Offender System sentence, but it was never offered.
Instead, Cheyenne was sentenced to 16 years in prison – the shortest possible sentence for that charge.
"I would have thought, later, in talking to the psychiatrist, that you might have seen some remorse,” says Eret. “It just never was there. It just never was there. And that figured in to our offer."
"(Reporter) Do you feel remorse?' "(Cheyenne) I do. And I don't think it's fair for her to say how I feel. She's never spoken one word to me. So how can she possibly know how I feel?"
Since hearing her fate in December of 2007, Cheyenne has been in the High Plains Correctional Facility in Brush, Colo. - a medium–security prison, where she's one of the youngest inmates.
For the year and a half between the death of her baby and the start of her sentence, Cheyenne earned money to pay for a headstone for the baby girl, whom she and her family named Kylie Anne.
Today, Cheyenne keeps a photo of Kylie Anne that was taken before she was buried.
And now, the 21-year-old is making the most of her time in prison. She's become involved in a dog training program offered through the facility that could become a career. And she takes as many education classes as she can.
"She's not going to do day for day,” says Eret. “She'll probably be a model inmate and be out on parole long before her 16 years is up."
Singer says, "She was a scared young lady who made a horrible mistake."
Cheyenne says she thinks about Kylie Anne every day, and the things she did that led to her baby's death.
"In the end, it was my responsibility, and it was just something that I didn't take seriously enough,” says Cheyenne. “I think that whatever I deserved came to me. They can't make me feel any worse than I already feel about myself. They can't punish me any worse than I put myself through daily."
Cheyenne told 11 News that the one thing she regrets is not telling her parents she was pregnant. She wishes now that she would have asked her mom for help.
Her first parole hearing is set for late in the year of 2014, and her first possible release date is in February of 2015. She'll be 26.
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