By JANET KELLEY, Staff Writer
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Robert Potter's final years were "hell on earth," a Lancaster judge was told Thursday.
As Potter tried to help his wife, Tonya, cope with her mental illness, alcohol dependency and cocaine abuse, prosecutors said, she responded with violence.
In May 2009, Tonya Potter stabbed her husband repeatedly with a barbecue fork and hit him with a baseball bat.
Robert Potter had a heart attack and died.
On Thursday, Tonya Potter was sentenced in Lancaster County Court to 7 1/2 to 15 years in prison, plus 5 years consecutive probation, for voluntary manslaughter, aggravated assault and terroristic threats.
Tonya Potter, 42, of the 1200 block of East Orange Street, pleaded guilty but mentally ill last week to the charges stemming from her husband's death.
"He loved Tonya to a fault, and it cost him his life," Robert Potter's niece, Susan Proper, told Judge Louis J. Farina before sentence was imposed.
His final years were "hell on earth," Proper said, as her uncle struggled to deal with his wife's drug and alcohol abuse and violent and irresponsible behavior.
But her uncle taught her an invaluable lesson about love, Proper said: "People need it the most when they deserve it the least."
Farina explained that guilty but mentally ill "is not a defense," but rather a punishment that includes mental health treatment as well as incarceration at a state prison.
The judge told Tonya Potter that she will be sent to a state prison facility where she will receive mental health treatment and then, at some point, be placed into the general prison population.
Before imposing sentence, Farina listened to the victim's relatives as well as impassioned arguments from Assistant District Attorney Susan Ellison and defense attorney Patricia Spotts.
Ellison said Robert Potter's 12-year-old son, the oldest of the couple's three children, told city police Detective James Fatta "what life was like" in their home.
When he'd leave for school, his mother was still in bed. When he'd come home, she was drinking beer, Ellison said.
The couple would argue, and Tonya Potter consistently resorted to violence against her husband.
"No child should have to see that," Ellison said.
It was their father, the boy told investigators, who did everything for them.
The son described his father as "the nicest guy in the world," Ellison said.
And, he taught them that no matter what, "they needed to respect their mother."
On the day of his father's death, the oldest son told police he was awakened around 4 a.m. by the sound of breaking glass and his parents yelling.
Then he saw his mother repeatedly stab his father with a barbecue fork in the chest and neck.
Robert Potter managed to get the fork away from his wife, prosecutors said, but Tonya Potter grabbed a baseball bat and began hitting her husband.
Shortly before 8 a.m., Robert Potter called an ambulance to take his wife to the hospital.
After emergency personnel left, prosecutors said, Robert Potter had a heart attack and died.
"On the day he died," Ellison said of the victim, "he just wanted her to get help."
Ellison asked the judge to "remember exactly what he was: A good father and a good man."
The couple's three children now live with their paternal grandmother.
When it was her turn to speak, Tonya Potter turned and looked at her husband's relatives sitting in the back of the courtroom.
She thanked them for taking care of her children and apologized for her actions.
Turning back to the judge, Tonya Potter said, "I'm just ready to do what I have to do."
Since Tonya Potter's arrest shortly after the incident, Spotts said she has seen a change in her client.
At first, Spotts said her client was "not even understanding the impact of what is going on. Now she does."
"I can't promise you she won't relapse," Spotts told Farina, but she said her hope is that Tonya Potter will change her behavior and "move forward."
"It always concerns me as a person," Spotts told Farina, "the lack of understanding of mental illness by the community.
"If you're mentally ill and out of control," Spotts said, people say the person is just using their illness as an excuse to behave badly.
But if someone has cancer or some other physical illness and acts badly, Spotts said, society is much more forgiving.
Her client has been evaluated and diagnosed by a local psychiatrist who concluded that Tonya Potter suffers from bipolar disorder.
But, Spotts said, persons with mental illnesses "do have a choice to seek treatment."
"You can't do drugs. You can't do alcohol," Spotts said, looking at Tonya Potter. "You have to want to get help.
"She has to be punished," Spotts said, adding that Tonya Potter is willing to take responsibility and be accountable for her actions.
jkelley@lnpnews.com
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