Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, February 12, 1992 TAG: 9202130011
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: MONICA DAVEY STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: BEDFORD LENGTH: Medium
STEWART SENTENCED TO DIE
The blank expression on Kenneth Stewart's face didn't change Tuesday as a jury sentenced him to die in the electric chair for murdering his wife and their 5-month-old son.As the sentence was read, Stewart's relatives began weeping in the row behind him. Stewart, who has said before that he deserved a sentence of death, pushed his glasses up on his nose.
The jury of five women and seven men deliberated for two hours and 20 minutes before concluding that Stewart would pose a danger to society in the future and that his crimes met the death penalty law's standard of "outrageous" vileness.
Stewart, 37, was convicted last week of capital murder and murder in the slayings of his estranged wife, Cindy, and their baby, Jonathan, last Mother's Day.
As they left the Bedford County Courthouse Tuesday night, Cindy Stewart's parents smiled and said they had prayed the jury would choose the death sentence for their son-in-law.
"Absolutely," Ed Schultz said. "I believe in an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth."
"The punishment fits the crime," added the victim's mother, Ruth Schultz, who last May discovered the bodies of her daughter and grandson - each shot twice through the head. Jonathan had been lying in his playpen when he was shot, and his body was then placed in the arms of his dead mother.
"It was a dastardly act," Schultz said. "I'll never forget that picture."
Urging them to think of Cindy and Jonathan, prosecutor James Updike told jurors to send a message that "justice" exists in Bedford County - by sentencing Stewart to die.
"Consider the lives of these two human beings," Updike said in his closing argument. "Jonathan never had the chance for anything."
"Not for a birthday, a Christmas, his first bicycle, for starting school . . . or for his mother tucking him in at night," Updike said.
"They didn't get any lawyers, they didn't get any juries, they got him as the executioner," Updike said, pointing to photos of the mother and son's bodies and referring to Kenneth Stewart.
"He put them to death. The law and evidence requires that he get no less."
Defense attorney Webster Hogeland, though, told jurors that they should be "better" than Stewart was himself and spare his life.
"One senseless act does not wipe away another," Hogeland said. Cruelty could only be wiped away by "kindness, charity and mercy."
In addition, he said, Stewart's childhood and his emotional state should be taken into account as mitigating factors in the crime.
Earlier, jurors had heard from a defense psychiatrist who testified that Stewart's early life had been rotten.
By 13, Stewart had turned to drinking as a way of coping with a family life that included alcohol abuse by his father, physical violence between his father and mother and sexual molestation by a neighbor, psychiatrist Robert Brown said.
Stewart also suffered from an "inadequate personality," he said. "He lacks the ability to use good judgment at various times," he said.
At the time of the killings, Stewart suffered from a brief period of amnesia, Brown said. He was unable to recall what happened during the killings because "the events were so troubling to him," Brown said.
He was also suffering from depression, Brown said. Unable to cope with being separated from his wife and son, Stewart experienced "an explosion of rage that led to the killings," Brown said.
But a prosecution expert reported that he found no signs of emotional or mental disorders in Stewart.
In what played like a courtroom battle of the experts, psychologist Arthur Centor testified that his exams of Stewart revealed a man perfectly capable of telling right from wrong.
That, Centor said, combined with Stewart's long string of past criminal convictions, indicated that Stewart would be a continuing threat to society.
Updike presented a stack of Stewart's convictions - for assaulting a police officer with a knife, for "malicious injury" to property, and for numerous charges of driving under the influence of alcohol.
Stewart did not testify Tuesday or during during his trial.
Asked if he knew of any reason the judge should not pronounce a sentence in his case, Stewart answered calmly, "No, sir, I do not."
A background report will be made before a judge formally sentences Stewart.
After the hearing, defense attorney Hogeland said he had not yet determined what his client's "real reaction" was to the jury sentence.
After the murders, Stewart repeatedly told authorities that he wanted to die for his crimes. Asked Tuesday whether that's still the case, Hogeland said, "Nobody wants to die."