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Here are the most recent articles in this case. For further details please visit the Update page
March 18th 2000
Police files
Steven Mross, staff writer
The Sentinel-Record
A Buckville woman convicted in January for murdering her
husband was
arrested again Thursday evening – her second arrest
since her conviction
while she remains out on an appeal bond.
Clara
Annette Stevens, 41, of 203 Iron Forks Road, was
allegedly involved
in some type of dispute with another woman in
the 100 block
of Prospect around 5:30 p.m. Thursday when both
women were stopped
by Garland County sheriff’s Capt. Roy
Elliott.
Hot
Springs police officer Jim Henson responded to the scene
and Elliott
told him he had seen both women driving erratically in
their vehicles
along the street in an apparent disturbance. After
talking with
the women, the second woman was released but
Stevens was
detained because her driver’s license was suspended.
She
was driving a black Toyota Celica she claimed to have
borrowed from
a friend, but a check of the license plate returned
to a different
vehicle. It was also found that Stevens had no proof
of liability
insurance so she was taken into custody.
After
Stevens was transported to the Garland County Detention
Center, Henson
checked the back seat of his unit and found a
chrome tube
with a burnt end suspected to be a “crack” pipe.
Henson
noted that he had inspected his unit when he came on
duty and Stevens
was the first person he had transported that
evening.
In
addition to charges of driving on a suspended driver’s license,
no insurance
and fictitious tags, Stevens was charged with
possession of
an instrument of crime. All four charges are
misdemeanors.
She
was released about two hours later on $1,000 bail and is
scheduled to
appear March 28 in Hot Springs Municipal Court.
Stevens
was arrested previously Jan. 15 on identical charges
after she was
stopped for speeding on Highway 270. It soon was
found she had
a suspended license from an earlier
driving-while-intoxicated
charge, no insurance and fictitious tags
on her vehicle.
A search of her vehicle revealed a suspected
“crack” pipe
left in the front seat.
Stevens
remains free on a $10,000 appeal bond after her
conviction Jan.
7 for second-degree murder in the shooting death
of her husband,
51-year-old James Dale Stevens.
She
was found guilty after a two-day trial in Garland County
Circuit Court
and sentenced to six years in prison. She filed an
official appeal
of the sentence late last month.
Jan 20th 2000
Woman convicted of murder arrested on new charges
Steven Mross, staff writer
The Sentinel-Record
A Buckville woman convicted earlier this month for murdering
her husband
was arrested again early Saturday while out on
appeal bond.
Clara
Annette Stevens, 40, of 203 Irons Fork Road, was
stopped shortly
after 1:30 a.m. while driving westbound on
Highway 270
near the Brady Mountain Cutoff after Garland
County sheriff’s
deputy Chuck Kirk paced her doing 70 miles per
hour in a 55
mph zone.
Before
he stopped her, Kirk had run a check on the license plate
on Stevens’
red pickup and found the tags returned to a different
vehicle.
A
further check after she was stopped revealed her driver’s
license was
suspended because of a prior arrest for driving while
intoxicated
so Kirk took her into custody.
As
he was putting her in the patrol car, Stevens asked if he
would retrieve
her purse from the pickup. When he went to get the
purse from the
front passenger seat, Kirk noted he saw a
suspected “crack”
pipe in plain sight.
Stevens
was charged with misdemeanor counts of driving on a
suspended driver’s
license and possession of an instrument of
crime. Both
charges carry a maximum penalty of up to one year in
jail.
She
also was cited for speeding, no proof of insurance and
having fictitious
tags.
Stevens
was out on a $10,000 appeal bond from her Jan. 7
conviction on
a charge of second-degree murder for the July 18,
1998, shooting
death of her husband, 51-year-old James Dale
Stevens.
After
a two-day trial in Garland County Circuit Court, Stevens
was found guilty
and the jury recommended a sentence of six
years in prison.
She is set to be formally sentenced Monday.
Stevens
was released again on $2,000 bail after her arrest
Saturday and
is scheduled to appear Feb. 8 in Hot Springs
Municipal Court.
Stevens
claimed at her trial that she shot her husband of 11 years
in self defense
because he was abusing her, but members of the
victim’s family
have maintained they never saw any signs of abuse
and feel Stevens
murdered the victim in cold blood with no
remorse.
The
suit seeks funeral expenses, property damage to the victim’s
destroyed Corvette,
insurance proceeds of property located in
Oakhill, Ohio,
and compensatory relief for grief and mental
anguish suffered
by the victim’s family because of his death.
Jan 7th 2000
Jury convicts woman in husband’s death
Steven Mross,
staff writer
The Sentinel-Record
A Buckville woman on trial for second-degree murder for
shooting and
killing her husband was sentenced to six years in
prison Friday
after a nine-woman and three-man jury found her
guilty after
two hours of deliberation.
Clara
Annette Stevens, 40, Friday told jurors she shot him in
self-defense
after a brutal attack that began as soon as he got
home that day.
She offered the sole testimony for her defense in
the last stages
of a two-day trial in Garland County Circuit Court,
outlining what
she described as a long history of abuse from the
victim, 51-year-old
James Dale Stevens.
One
of the key arguments against her was that James Stevens
apparently had
his back turned when she shot him – the bullet
entering his
buttocks and exiting his left thigh – and reportedly
wasn’t armed
at the time.
“There
was victimization, but there was only one victim in this
case and he
is now deceased and his name was James Stevens,”
Garland County
Deputy Prosecutor Dan Turner said.
“The
real theme of this case was the inconsistencies,” he said,
stressing the
several different versions of the July 18, 1998,
shooting which
Clara Stevens has given.
Shortly
after the shooting, she had told emergency personnel and
Garland County
sheriff’s investigators that her husband
accidentally
shot himself while she was out of the room.
Later,
she told Arkansas State Police investigator Scotty Dodd
she had shot
him, but that she had reached for the gun and it
accidentally
discharged and hit him.
On
Friday, she testified that after an hour or two of being
assaulted by
Stevens, including being shocked repeatedly with a
stun gun, beaten
and dragged down stairs, she had gone upstairs
to get a .357-magnum
handgun and had shot the victim from the
stairs as he
stood in the kitchen area.
After
the verdict was reached, Turner said it had “boiled down to
her credibility”
and the credibility of the investigating officers “who
did a really
good job.”
“The
only way the jury was going to buy the abuse argument was
if they believed
what she said today which meant they had to
disregard all
her earlier inconsistent statements.
“That was just too much, too tall an order.”
The
investigation had been complicated by the fact there
essentially
were two crime scenes because after the victim was
shot, Clara
Stevens loaded him into a red Corvette and allegedly
was taking him
to the hospital.
Instead,
she lost control of the car on Mountain Pine Road and
slid into a
pole. Emergency personnel responding to the accident
found James
Stevens deceased in the car.
Stevens
said Friday she was forced to try to take him herself
because the
victim had pulled the phone out of the wall shortly
after arriving
home that afternoon.
Sobbing
at one point, she said she drove “as fast as I could”
because she
was still hoping he could be helped.
Chief
Deputy Prosecutor Terri Harris grilled Stevens about why
she never sought
help from a neighbor or at any of the many
houses and businesses
she passed enroute to the hospital.
“I
just wanted to assist him,” she said. “I didn’t stop. I wish I
had.”
Asked
about her differing versions of the shooting, she said, “I
was scared,
that’s all. I’m sorry I lied.”
When
questioned about why she had stayed with her husband for
11 years despite
the ongoing abuse, Stevens said, “I loved him.
He wasn’t always
bad.
“I just couldn’t handle it anymore. I just wanted him to stop.”
Stevens’
attorney, Sky Tapp, said the shooting was the result of
“years and years
of brutal abuse” which he characterized as
“degrading,
sadistic and totally inhuman.”
“She
was zapped like a cow or a pig and told she was going to
die,” he said.
Tapp
argued her testimony Friday was consistent with evidence
at the scene
and that her earlier versions shortly after the shooting
could be attributed
to shock.
“She
had just hit a telephone pole at 100 miles per hour,” he
said.
He
later noted that Stevens “isn’t perfect by a long shot” but had
just tried to
stop “a pattern of abuse that had spiraled completely,
totally and
unequivocally out of control.”
He said she “ended a nightmare that needed to be stopped.”
Harris
countered the case was a classic example of the growing
trend of “lack
of responsibility for your own actions in this society
and it’s getting
worse and worse.”
She
told jurors they needed to stop it with this case or “the
system is going
to come collapsing down around our ears.”
Jan 6th
Woman’s lawyer: Abuse, torture led to
shooting
Steven Mross,
staff writer
The Sentinel-Record
The attorney for a woman charged with second-degree murder
for the shooting
death of her husband during a confrontation at the
couple’s Buckville
home hammered away Thursday at the case
built against
his client by Garland County sheriff’s investigators.
Sky
Tapp told the nine-woman, three-man Garland County
Circuit Court
jury at the outset that he didn’t dispute the fact that
Clara Annette
Stevens, 40, had shot her husband of 11 years,
James Dale Stevens,
51, on July 18, 1998, but “I dispute the facts
surrounding
what occurred.”
He
painted a grisly portrait of abuse and torture in the moments
leading up to
the shooting when, Tapp said, his client “had taken
about as much
as a human being can humanly stand.”
He
said the theme of the case was “promises kept and promises
broken,” with
the promise of repeated abuse to Clara Stevens
kept and the
promise that “I’ll never do it again” broken “over and
over.”
Garland
County Deputy Prosecutor Terri Harris acknowledged
in her opening
remarks that “this is an unusual case,” but argued
that the evidence
would show the death was “an intentional act”
and that Clara
Stevens meant to kill her husband.
One
of the strongest arguments brought out against the accused
is the three
different versions of the events leading up to the
shooting she
has offered at different times throughout the
investigation.
The
body of James Stevens was found on the passenger side of
the couple’s
red Corvette after Clara Stevens had crashed the car
into a pole
on Mountain Pine Road that evening.
Tom
Patton, a paramedic for St. Joseph’s Regional Health
Center who had
responded to the scene of the accident and was
transporting
Clara Stevens to the hospital, testified she told him her
husband had
been shot and she was trying to get him to the
hospital when
she crashed.
She
told him she had been upstairs at their residence when she
heard a gunshot
and then found her husband in the kitchen with a
gunshot wound.
The
victim had been shot in the left buttocks and the bullet had
exited through
his thigh.
Sheriff’s
investigator Ron Martineau testified that when he
questioned Clara
Stevens at the hospital, she indicated she and her
husband had
been “arguing all day” and that he had assaulted her.
He
said she told him he had been drinking and began abusing
her, including
shocking her with a stun gun and beating her.
She
told him at one point she put several guns they had in the
house in a car
parked outside “to keep them out of his reach.” She
also repeated
the claim that her husband had shot himself.
On
July 21, she again was interviewed by investigator Scotty
Dodd with the
Arkansas State Police who testified she told him
they had been
fighting and she picked up the gun – a .357 magnum
– off a bar
stool and it accidentally discharged and struck him.
Tapp
asked Dodd if Stevens had given any specifics about the
fight leading
up to the shooting and Dodd indicated she had just
said they had
been fighting.
Tapp
pointed out that in her official statement she described
being dragged
down the steps by her hair several times, stunned
with the stun
gun on her head and breasts and kicked in the back
of the head.
“Didn’t
any of that concern you?,” Tapp yelled. “Don’t you
remember any
of that?”
Because
of an earlier court ruling, Dodd was not allowed to read
from the text
of the statement he had been given and had to quote
from memory.
He
offered to read it at one point to clarify the specifics but was
cut off by Tapp.
Tapp
also grilled sheriff’s investigator Danny Wilson at one point
about why Clara
Stevens wasn’t examined for injuries sustained
from the stun
gun and the other alleged abuse.
Wilson
answered that he was never at the hospital and that by
the time he
interviewed her at the sheriff’s department she had
been treated
and released from the hospital.
“I
assumed (the doctors) examined her,” he said, also noting that
he didn’t observe
any injuries when he spoke with her.
At
one point, Judge John Homer Wright had to admonish Tapp
for badgering
Wilson.
In
his opening remarks, Tapp had outlined a slightly different
version of events.
He
said James Stevens had come home carrying two bottles of
tequila and
“started drinking as he walked through the door.”
Then
he spent the next two hours methodically abusing, torturing
and threatening
his wife.
He
said Clara Stevens tried to divert her abuser “from the terror
going on” by
suggesting they go get something to eat. He refused
and at one point
forced her to get on her knees and beg for her
life.
She
finally ran upstairs, got a gun and was walking down the
stairs when
she saw James Stevens going for another gun.
She
fired from above him on the stairs and “because she didn’t
want to kill
him and still loves him” she shot him in the buttocks
instead of the
chest or head.
“She
was forced to defend herself in some manner or she would
have been the
one laying on the floor that day,” he said.
Tapp
argued the bullet went in at an angle and “ripped apart” the
femoral artery
which caused the victim to bleed to death.
“Normally, such
an injury wouldn’t have killed him,” he said.
Clara
Stevens then tried to help her husband to their truck, but
couldn’t get
him up into the cab so she dragged him to the car and
tried to make
it to the hospital.
“Things
were spiraling out of control and she was scared to
death,” he said.
The
trial is scheduled to resume today at 8:30 a.m.
July 19th Article
This is a gif file that I scan
July
20th article
July
23rd article
Aug.
5 article
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Keep up to date on this story by reading The Sentinel-Record everyday, and checking with us everyday for the insights to the real story.
Here is another small article that I found on one of her cousins
who is taken up for her.
It has nothing to do with the case, but it shows the type of
people they are.
Police files
Story by Steven Mross
An apparently drunk local woman was arrested early Sunday
after she allegedly bit a Hot Springs police officer outside her
home.
Cheryl Ann Johnson, 42, of 810 Richard St., faces a felony
charge of second-degree battery and misdemeanor charges of
public intoxication, disorderly conduct and resisting arrest.
A man living with Johnson called police shortly after 2 a.m. to
report that Johnson was intoxicated and attempting to get in her
car to drive back into town to a local bar.
Officer Howard J. Kisor arrived to check it out and saw Johnson
walking away from her vehicle back toward her home.
His report noted she was staggering and there was a strong odor
of alcohol.
He caught up to her as she started to go in the front door and she
briefly attempted to shut the door on him.
She reportedly stated, "I'll claim you raped me if you touch me."
Kisor was trying to put handcuffs on her to take her into custody
when she started to wrestle with him and pull away.
Her companion tried to help Kisor by holding Johnson's legs, but
she
suddenly yelled that Kisor had groped her and began to bite
him about three inches above his knee.
The report noted that Johnson bit him hard enough
to draw
blood and that Kisor was forced to strike Johnson in the thigh to
get her to stop.
She was eventually handcuffed and transported to Garland
County Detention Center for booking. Kisor was treated and
released at National Park Medical Center where he reportedly
required a tetanus shot for the bite.
Johnson was being held on $4,500 bail with a Hot Springs
Municipal Court hearing set for July 29. She could face up to six
years in prison on the felony charge.
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