Mom sentenced again for killing
An emotionally disturbed woman convicted of smothering her infant son with plastic wrap in 1989 was re-sentenced Wednesday.
The case was one of about two dozen old Spokane County murder convictions recently overturned by the state Supreme Court.
Stephanie Tanner was convicted of second-degree felony murder in 1994 after police investigated the 1989 death. Authorities became suspicious when a second infant son was hospitalized with an odd breathing problem.
Doctors concluded Tanner was suffering from a rare attention-seeking personality disorder called Munchausen syndrome by proxy.
In Munchausen syndrome, named for an 18th Century German soldier and politician known for outrageous lies, people mutilate themselves or feign illnesses. Munchausen by proxy refers to people, typically mothers, who secretly abuse children or incapacitated adults who are under their control.
Tanner and scores of other prison inmates had their convictions overturned in November by the Washington Supreme Court.
The court retroactively applied an October 2002 ruling that part of the state’s felony murder rule had been defective since 1975. The law says suspects may be convicted of murder if a victim is inadvertently killed in the course of some other felony, such as robbery assault.
Until the Legislature amended the law in 2002, the list of crimes that could lead to second-degree felony murder didn’t specifically list fourth-degree assault. Trial courts had been using fourth-degree assault as a basis for second-degree murder convictions even before the amendment.
The Supreme Court said in November that such convictions were invalid.
Tanner, known as Stephanie Pasiczynck at the time, accepted a plea bargain in 1994 that substituted second-degree felony murder – based on fourth-degree assault – for a first-degree murder charge.
When Tanner was first convicted at age 25, she entered a no-contest plea to avoid openly admitting guilt.
“This time, she stood up and said, ‘I did it, and I’m really sorry,’ ” said Deputy Prosecutor Ed Hay.
Because Tanner voluntarily agreed to be sterilized 10 years ago, Hay agreed to recommend a moderate 12-year sentence. But Superior Court Judge Tari Eitzen imposed slightly more than 17 years.
On Wednesday, Tanner and the same cast of court officials – Eitzen, Hay and Assistant Public Defender Steve Reich – reprised their 1994 roles. Hay and Tanner stuck to their original deal, which includes a lifetime ban on contact with children and vulnerable adults, and Eitzen accepted it.
The only difference was that “criminal mistreatment of a child” was substituted as the underlying felony for a second-degree felony murder plea.
As a result, Tanner is expected to be released from prison as soon as supervision arrangements and prison paperwork can be completed. With credit for good behavior, she had been scheduled for release in March 2006.
Tanner’s case was the second to be resolved since Chief Criminal Deputy Prosecutor Jack Driscoll directed his staff to re-prosecute the prison inmates whose convictions were overturned.
On Dec. 27, Donald Snelling pleaded guilty to regular, intentional second-degree murder and received the same sentence he got in 1993. Snelling had nearly completed the sentence, and could have increased his prison time by refusing to plead guilty again.
Snelling beat his wife, Karen Snelling, to death with a baseball bat in their Spokane Valley home in July 1992.