Samuel C. Stretton, the high-profile Chester County lawyer, said he’s been hearing from women about Lindsay Clancy, the Massachusetts mother facing murder charges for killing her three young children.
“You know, Sam, she’s innocent,” he recalled one woman telling him at a supermarket.
Stretton knows the Clancy case has struck a nerve. He knows because he defended a woman in a similar case 37 years ago.
He represented Tanya Dacri, a Northeast Philadelphia woman who pleaded guilty in 1989 to drowning her infant son Zacharry and dismembering his body.
She was sentenced to life in prison.
“I don’t think there’s any question now, in hindsight, that she suffered from [the] postpartum diagnosis. Problem was, it wasn’t understood back then, like it is now,” Stretton said in a phone interview Tuesday night.
The jury in the Clancy case began deliberating last week. Unable to reach a verdict, Judge William Sullivan declared a mistrial Friday afternoon. A status hearing to decide where the case goes from here was scheduled for Sept. 29.
Clancy, a former labor and delivery nurse, admits she strangled her children, but her legal defense is that postpartum psychosis led to her actions. Clancy, 36, has pleaded not guilty by reason of lack of criminal responsibility. Prosecutors say she knew what she was doing.
In Pennsylvania, Dacri, now 58, is serving her sentence at the State Correctional Institution at Muncy, the state prison for women.
Stretton believes “it’s the right time” for Dacri to seek a pardon or commutation. That would require a unanimous decision from the state Board of Pardons, and then the approval of the governor.
“She and I have been talking about it for about 10 years, but I told her to wait a little longer. I thought that would enhance her chances, and now I think it’s the right time,” Stretton said.
The last time Stretton communicated with Dacri was by letter several years ago. Stretton said he would move forward with a clemency application “if she still wants to do it.”
Dacri has been behind bars since she was arrested in 1989.
“She’s done well in prison. She’s adjusted. She’s attended all the programs. She’s sorry. She’s regretful,” Stretton said.
Dacri “has been adequately punished, and therefore we’re asking them to allow a sentence to be commuted or a pardon be granted, so she can get out and have some of her life left,” Stretton said.
“Postpartum psychosis” as a legal defense was unusual but not unknown before Dacri’s case, according to a paper published in the spring 1991 Dickinson Law Review.
Wide-ranging sentences
While Dacri was sentenced to life in prison, mothers with similar Pennsylvania cases were given wildly different sentences.
For example, the paper’s author, Amy L. Nelson, cited the case of Sharon Weisensale, who was found guilty but mentally ill in Bucks County of third-degree murder for the 1984 drowning death of her 2-month-old daughter.
“She was given a five-year suspended prison sentence and was required to undergo psychiatric treatment,” Nelson wrote.
In another case, Sharon Comitz, of Osceola Mills, Pa., pleaded guilty but mentally ill to third-degree drowning in the 1985 death of her month-old son, Nelson wrote.
According to testimony, Comitz was treated for severe postpartum depression at the time of the murder, Nelson said. Comitz received a prison sentence of eight to 20 years.
In another Pennsylvania case, Chanda Smith was convicted of third-degree murder in the drowning death of her three-week-old daughter, Nelson said. Smith was sentence to five to 10 years in prison.
“Experts testified that Smith, like Weisensale and Comitz, murdered her child while suffering from severe postpartum psychosis,” Nelson wrote.
A false story falls apart
On the morning of Jan. 12, 1989, the Dacri story hit the front page of The Inquirer under the headline, “Police: Mother drowned baby.”
Tanya Dacri, who was 20 years old at the time, initially told police that Zacharry had been taken by purse-snatching Black men — a detail that drew accusations of racism from some media commentators.
However, investigators were immediately suspicious. Dacri’s fake story quickly fell apart that same day and she told police she killed her son because he was always crying, The Inquirer reported.
She told police she dismembered his body and put the pieces in weighted plastic bags. She and her husband, Phillip Dacri, then disposed of the bags in the Neshaminy Creek in Bucks County and a creek in Carbon County.
Phillip Dacri pleaded guilty to helping his wife dispose of the remains and served 10 months in prison.
In court, During court proceedings, a psychologist for the defense and a psychiatrist for the prosecution agreed Dacri had a mental disorder that might have deteriorated to psychosis on the day she killed her infant son, The Inquirer reported.
But they disagreed on whether Dacri specifically intended to kill her Zacharry.
“I am convinced beyond a reasonable doubt that, when you placed your son in that bathtub and when you turned on the water and put the plug in the tub, that it was your intention to kill him,” Common Pleas Court Judge Michael Stiles told Dacri during her sentencing.
