Beaver County man's life spared

A federal judge on Thursday overturned the death sentences of a former Beaver County man convicted of killing his estranged wife and the man with whom she was dancing in a bar.

However, U.S. District Judge Arthur J. Schwab upheld the first-degree murder convictions of Andre Stevens in the Feb. 8, 1992, killings of Brenda Jo Stevens and Michael Love.

During the jury selection process in Beaver County, Schwab said, a potential juror who expressed opposition to the death penalty was excused by Common Pleas Judge Robert E. Kunselman without further questioning to determine if she could follow the court's instructions and impose the penalty if warranted by the evidence.

"Stevens was sentenced before a jury that was improperly death qualified. For these reasons, his death sentences cannot stand," Schwab wrote in a 41-page opinion.

Stevens contended that his constitutional rights were violated, citing a U.S. Supreme Court decision that a death sentence cannot be imposed if the jury was chosen by excluding potential jurors simply because of their general objections to the death penalty.

Schwab delayed his order to overturn Stevens' death penalty for 180 days to enable the state to conduct a new sentencing hearing.

If no hearing is held during that period, he said the penalty will automatically become life in prison without chance of parole.

A spokesman for the Beaver County District Attorney's Office was unavailable for comment.

Stevens had been found guilty by Kunselman of first-degree murder in a non-jury trial in April 1993. A jury was selected to sentence him.

Stevens had been drinking in the bar when his estranged wife entered with friends and later danced with Love, whom she had met a few months before.

Stevens got a semiautomatic pistol from his car and shot the victims, even after they were down. Witnesses said he then calmly left the bar.

Stevens had lost appeals of his conviction and sentence in the state courts before his attorneys, Defender Association of Philadelphia, filed a petition in federal court.