Attorneys have reached a plea agreement in the case of a 23-year-old McKinney man indicted last year on a murder charge after police said he caused the death of an unborn child by assaulting his pregnant girlfriend.

The murder charge was dropped Friday, and Brian Christopher Canaday was sentenced to six years in prison for a charge of assault causing bodily injury.

The woman survived the May 2008 assault, but the fetus she was carrying was stillborn, police said. A 5-year-old state law allows grand juries the option of indicting a person on murder charges if it believes that person caused the death of an unborn child.

The law is considered controversial because it addresses the question of whether a fetus is a person.

The Collin County prosecutor did not return a call for comment. Canaday's defense attorney, Angela Tucker, said she would have been comfortable taking the case to trial.

"We were set to go to trial, and they gave us the plea offer really at the 11th hour," she said. "The client weighed his options and just decided he would plead to the assault."

Tucker said she was surprised at the offer.

"With our district attorney's office, it's rare for them to dismiss cases, especially a case of that magnitude," she said. "However, based upon our investigation and the facts, what we knew about the case, it was a bad case to begin with for the state."