Murder Defendant Found Man to Win Case: Himself

Stewart declined the offer, and Simpson soon persuaded a judge to let him out of the case. Simpson returned $4,000 of the $10,000 Stewart's family had paid him, according to court records.

"Let's just say we had a massive disagreement on how the case should be handled," Simpson said. He described Stewart's legal motions, some of which Stewart wrote when Simpson represented him, as "gibberish."

Stewart decided to represent himself. Soon, he was boning up on legal matters with material from the jail's law library.

"It's a prosecutor's nightmare," said Simpson, a former assistant state's attorney in Prince George's. "The jury has natural sympathy for someone representing himself. If you try to cut him off with objections, the jury thinks you're oppressive. If you let him go, he gets in all kinds of evidence that wouldn't usually be allowed."

The second trial began Feb. 25. Stewart wore a gray pinstripe suit his mother had bought just for the occasion. Security was tight; sheriff's deputies were stationed behind, next to and in front of Stewart, a courtroom observer said.

In his opening statement, Stewart accused the police of botching the investigation. He told the jury that Green, his former housemate, had maintained "a felonious atmosphere of drugs, and prostitution, for the last two years."

At times during the trial, Stewart embarked on long soliloquies, citing criminal codes without making a clear point. Once, when the jury was not in the room, Stewart told the judge that a police investigator had not made good on a promise to provide him with a particular photo.

"It didn't exist," Stewart said in court, according to a transcript. "That's another inconsistent act of false affirmation, which I am going to request it be recognized as actually an issue of perjury under subornation contradictory statements as to Subsection 9-101, perjury, c(1), if a person makes an oath or affirmation to two contradictory statements each of which is false is prohibited by Subsection A of this section, it is insufficient to allege and for conviction to prove that one of the statements are willfully false without specifying which one, your honor."

"Okay. Anything else?" Shaw Geter replied.

When it was her turn to testify, Barahana backed off her earlier assertion that her brother told her that he thought he'd killed someone. Instead, she testified that Stewart merely told her that someone might need help.

Prosecutors admitted into evidence an earlier statement she had given police, a more incriminating account that matched her testimony in the first trial.

In his closing argument, Stewart seized on the possible discrepancy in the timeline, noting that Green's account placed the incident more than two hours before paramedics arrived.

It is unclear exactly how the jurors reached their verdict or how they came to it so quickly. Shaw Geter did not respond to requests seeking access to the jury list. Such lists are generally public unless they are specifically sealed, and the court file in the Stewart case contains no sealing order.

Stewart said he was surrounded by at least six sheriff's deputies when the jury returned Feb. 27. A sergeant tapped him on the shoulder and advised him to stay calm, he said.

But Stewart said he wasn't worried -- and wouldn't have been no matter the outcome.

"There were probably 100 reasons to appeal," he said. "The judge made so many wrong rulings it wasn't funny."