It's been almost eight years since Calvin Shane Myers admitted to stabbing his pregnant ex-girlfriend, Irene Christensen, at least a dozen times with a rusty hunting knife and leaving her to die in a Summit County snowbank, killing his unborn son in the process.

Deseret News graphic Criminal defendants Requires Adobe Acrobat.

Yet, early next month, his attorney will argue before the Utah Supreme Court that Summit County prosecutors overcharged Myers in order to force a quick resolution to the case.

It's something that may happen often, defense attorney Scott York says: Capital-murder defendants are threatened with the death penalty and are left with no choice but to plead guilty to save their lives.

"When you want to, you can use a vague law to strong-arm somebody out of their due-process rights," York said. "They threatened (Myers) with the death penalty and, guilty or not, he just never got his day in court."

York will tell the high court on Dec. 3 that the charge to which Myers pleaded — capital murder — was predicated upon the death of two people, when the evidence suggests that only one person actually died in December 1994.

The appeal isn't a direct challenge to the portion of Utah's criminal homicide statute that covers unborn children, although Myers was the first person ever charged under the 1985 law.

"This is not a case about fetal rights — that is properly a political question," Myers' appellate brief states. "This is a prayer for relief from the coercive use of the threat of capital punishment, where there was no legal basis for imposition of the death penalty."