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NORWALK, Conn. A woman who garnered national attention last year when she was arrested and charged with larceny after enrolling her son in a Norwalk school pleaded guilty Wednesday in Norwalk Superior Court.
Tanya McDowell, who claimed she was homeless when she was arrested in the theft of education case, also pleaded guilty to drug charges Wednesday. She will serve five years of a 12-year sentence, according to the plea deal worked out by her attorney, Darnel Crosland.
Five years is the mandatory minimum sentence in the drug charges McDowell faced. Her five-year sentence will be followed by five years of probation.
She pleaded guilty under the terms of the Alford Doctrine, in which she acknowledged that the state had sufficient evidence to convict her. Pleading was not an admission of guilt. "She is not pleading guilty because she is guilty, but she is allowing the court to find her guilty," Crosland said.
The drug charges stemmed from undercover investigations in Norwalk and Bridgeport that began after her arrest in the school larceny case. Crosland said she was forced to plead guilty to the larceny as part of the plea in the drug case.
"The state would not allow us to separate the larceny case from the drug case," he said. "It was an all or nothing deal."
If she had gone to trial, she would have faced the possibility of a much longer sentence than 12 years had she been convicted of the drug offenses.
McDowell was arrested in April 2011 after enrolling her 5-year-old son in Brookside Elementary School by using a friend's Roodner Court address. The case attracted national attention and eventually brought Al Sharpton to a political rally here. After McDowell was arrested again in June on multiple drug charges, the media attention died down.
Crosland credited Bridgeport Superior Court Judge Frank Iannotti for bringing the case to a close. "Had it not been for Judge Iannotti we would not be in this place today," Crosland said. "He was very introspective on this, he helped us work this out. I think he really believed she wasn't guilty in the larceny case. But once her drug cases came out, he said that we had to come to reality and he helped us move along."
Sentencing in the Bridgeport case is scheduled for March 27. As part of the plea arrangement, that sentencing will also apply to the Norwalk case. The terms of her probation include the possibility of paying up to $6,200 in restitution to Norwalk, and drug and substance abuse treatment.
McDowell was free on bond for a time after her arrest in April. Crosland said she was sober for a while and did well in the Alternative to Incarceration program. The drug charges came after she graduated.
Her son is in the care of his grandmother and is attending school in Bridgeport. McDowell will not see him for the duration of her imprisonment, but they write to each other.
Crosland was asked how the public should measure McDowell as a mother. "I think we should measure her not by the fact that she was arrested for selling drugs but what she has done for her child," he said. "One thing you do know she has done for her child was to put him in a good school and she chose a good school, and she stood by him and that is what you remember about Tanya, she tried to get her child a good education."
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