One-Year Term In Girl’s Death

Superior Court Judge Fred Stewart Thursday ordered a one-year jail term for a woman convicted of vehicular homicide in the Halloween death of a 5-year-old girl.

Prosecutor Tom Metzger said he had planned to recommend a three-year term. But he decided against it after defense attorney Dennis Scott presented evidence of juror misconduct in Kathy Van Stedum’s trial.

The car Van Stedum was driving in Newport Oct. 31 struck and killed Krissy Jones, who had been trick-or-treating.

Van Stedum, a former Pend Oreille County sheriff’s dispatcher, acknowledged she had been drinking at a bar before the accident, and her blood-alcohol level later tested above .10, Washington’s legal threshhold for intoxication.

Scott last week filed a sworn statement in which one of the jurors who convicted Van Stedum admitted to a history of drunken-driving convictions. The juror had failed to note the convictions in a questionnaire used to select jurors, and Scott said he planned to seek a new trial.

, DataTimes