Steven Evans was sentenced to death by the State of Florida for the kidnapping and murder of Kenneth Lewis. According to court documents Steven Evans, Edward Francis and Gervalow Ward would beat, kidnap and later murder Kenneth Lewis. Kenneth Lewis would be arrested, convicted and sentenced to death.
Steven Evans 2021 Information
| DC Number: | 330290 |
|---|---|
| Name: | EVANS, STEVEN M |
| Race: | BLACK |
| Sex: | MALE |
| Birth Date: | 07/31/1967 |
| Initial Receipt Date: | 03/18/1994 |
| Current Facility: | UNION C.I. |
| Current Custody: | MAXIMUM |
| Current Release Date: | DEATH SENTENCE |
Steven Evans More News
Steven Maurice Evans was tried and convicted in 1999 for the first-degree murder and kidnapping of Kenneth Lewis in 1996. Evans was sentenced to death for his participation in the crimes. The trial was delayed when Evans was found not competent to proceed on two occasions and had to be hospitalized. At the final competency hearing, two experts opined that Evans was competent to be tried. A third expert concluded that he was not competent. After hearing testimony from the three experts, the trial court found Evans competent to stand trial.
Evans, Lewis, and two other individuals, Edward Francis and Gervalow Ward, traveled together from Orlando to Sanford to commit a home invasion robbery on a purported drug dealer. The robbery was called off when Lewis abandoned his companions and drove off in the getaway car, which was owned by Evans’ girlfriend’s brother. The other three men went to the nearby home of an acquaintance, Mark Quinn. Evans called his girlfriend Shana Wright and warned her that Lewis might be coming to her apartment. Evans instructed Wright to call the police and report the car stolen, and to remove her money from the apartment. Evans, Francis, Ward, Quinn, and another man named Blaine Stafford went to Wright’s apartment and waited for Lewis. When Lewis entered the apartment, the men jumped him, beat him, and bound and gagged him. When the police arrived to investigate the stolen vehicle report, the men took Lewis to a back room of the apartment.
After the police left, Evans fashioned a homemade silencer from a shampoo bottle stuffed with plastic bags and taped it to the barrel of a .22-caliber pistol. Evans instructed Ward to check the backyard for any witnesses. Then Evans, Francis, and Ward walked Lewis to a culvert behind the apartment building. Evans told Lewis that they were the last three people he would leave behind and that they were the last people he would see on earth. Evans then placed the gun to Lewis’s head and fired six shots. Five of the shots entered Lewis’s head.
Francis was tried and convicted for the same crime and was sentenced to life imprisonment. Francis testified against Evans at the 1999 trial. Ward pled guilty to the lesser charge of kidnapping and received a ten-year negotiated sentence. Ward also testified against Evans at trial. The other individuals involved in the case were not charged with any crimes. Stafford testified at Evans’ trial; Quinn did not. Evans was convicted of premeditated first-degree murder. At the penalty phase, Evans presented evidence about his childhood and teenage years as a member of a Jehovah’s Witnesses congregation. He also presented evidence of two childhood head injuries, a change in personality after the second injury at age nineteen, and several incidents of “out of control” behavior after he consumed alcohol. At age twenty-two or twenty-three, Evans committed adultery and was disassociated from the Jehovah’s Witnesses. Evans was twenty-eight years old at the time of this crime.
The jury recommended a sentence of death by an eleven-to-one vote