Commonwealth v. Delaney

On April 30, 1986, Charles C. Delaney, III, strangled his estranged ex-wife, Pom Song Delaney, with a piece of rope. He surreptitiously buried her in a hole that he had dug two days earlier in his backyard in Plymouth. After giving various false accounts of her whereabouts over the next few months, he finally confessed the crime to investigating Plymouth police officers on October 28, 1986, and was indicted for murder in the first degree in December, 1986.

Delaney’s defense at the two-week jury trial (at which he did not testify) was lack of criminal responsibility. He presented evidence,…