Stewart v. State

Hines, Justice.

Theodore Stewart pled guilty to felony murder in 1985 in connection with the fatal shooting of a teller during an attempted armed robbery at a bank, and was sentenced to life imprisonment. In February 1994, Stewart filed a pro se petition to withdraw his guilty plea, claiming that, as a 19-year-old with a limited education, he was misled, coerced and tricked into making the plea because of misleading information given him by the prosecutor and his court-appointed counsel. He maintained that he was placed under duress by conver sations with his counsel in which counsel…