State v. Stewart

“If I wrong someone when not myself, then Hamlet does it not.

— Hamlet

The motivations for murder are seldom more apparent than in this case. On June 13, 2009, after thirty-eight years of marriage, the last three living apart, Rhonda Stewart finally understood that her marriage was her hospitalized husband intended to divorce her. She was asked to leave her husband’s hospital room. She did so. She drove home. She got a gun. She returned to the hospital. She parked. She walked to the Intensive Care Unit where her recently-comatose husband now lay incapacitated. She stood at his bedside and…