![]() ![]() After examining the new information and testing DNA evidence in the case, officials from all three agencies agreed that the appropriate course of action was to ask a judge to vacate or reverse Stewart’s conviction and sentence for murder.ĭNA testing, completed by the Broward Sheriff’s Office lab in February 2019, shows Harrison was raped and killed by Jack Harold Jones (DOB ). The Broward Sheriff’s Office, the Hollywood Police Department and the Broward State Attorney’s Office reopened the Harrison murder investigation in November 2018 when new evidence came to light that raised questions and concerns about Stewart’s conviction for the murder. (For clarity, Stewart’s convictions and sentences for the three unrelated Broward sexual battery offenses andįive Mississippi sexual battery offenses remain intact.) He spent most of his time in incarceration in the Mississippi state prison system where he had asked to serve his punishment so that he could be closer to his family. In February 2007, Mississippi sent him back to Florida and he died of cancer in state prison in September 2008. He was sentenced for the Mississippi crimes in 1984. ![]() On June 30, 1983, Stewart was sentenced to 50 years in state prison on each of the three rapes, with an agreement that he would serve all three sentences concurrently or at the same time.īroward prosecutors also agreed to let Stewart serve his Florida prison terms at the same time as he was serving multiple 50-year prison terms in Mississippi for five sexual battery offenses and related burglaries and robberies he pleaded guilty to committing in Mississippi in the early 1980s. As part of the plea agreements in those three Florida rape cases, Broward prosecutors agreed not to pursue or file charges in six additional Broward sexual battery cases about which he had been questioned. Stewart swiftly pleaded guilty to three counts of sexual battery with the use of a deadly weapon in Broward County. One of the rape victims identified Stewart in a live lineup and his confessions contained details that independently corroborated the accounts provided by two more victims, investigators said. The attacker was dubbed “The Victoria Park Rapist.”Īfter his arrest, Stewart confessed to several of the nine rapes he was suspected of committing in Broward County. The city had launched a special task force to try to identify and arrest the man responsible for a series of rapes in Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park, which at the time had its own police department. On June 8, 1983, Fort Lauderdale police arrested Stewart for the Broward rapes, after he was seen attempting to break into a home in the city. Those rapes all occurred in the early 1980s. Stewart became a suspect in the Hollywood murder after he had confessed, pleaded guilty and was already serving three 50-year state prison sentences for the unrelated series of rapes in Fort Lauderdale and Oakland Park and while he was awaiting sentencing on the series of rapes in the Gulfport, Mississippi area. Stewart was not prosecuted for several other sexual batteries that he was suspected of committing in Broward County. He was sentenced to 50 years of concurrent time for the murder. On the murder case, Stewart was sentenced to serve his prison term to run at the same time as the eight 50-year prison terms he was already serving for numerous unrelated rapes that occurred in the early 1980s in Broward County, Florida, and Harrison County, Mississippi. ![]() ![]() In January 1985, Ronald Henry Stewart (DOB ) pleaded no contest to the second- degree murder of Regina Harrison (DOB ). The Broward State Attorney’s Office filed court documents earlier this year asking a judge to reverse the conviction and sentence of a man who pleaded no contest to the 1983 murder of Regina Harrison in Hollywood. Transcript-of-Ronald-Stewart-change-of-plea Download ![]()
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