Chaz Zachary Stephens appeared Thursday in Barton County District Court and entered a “guilty” plea to second-degree intentional murder in the death of 2-year-old Iviona Marae May Lewis in March of 2018. District Judge Mike Keeley accepted the plea. Sentencing is scheduled for 1:30 p.m. on June 3 at the Barton County Courthouse.
Other charges were dropped in accordance with a plea agreement with Kansas Attorney General’s Derek Schmidt’s office.
Stephens, 26, from Hoisington, appeared with his attorney, Paul Oller and Assistant Attorney General Lyndzie Carter represented the state. Carter said family members of the victim had been notified of the agreement, which was signed last week.
Stephens wore a protective vest over his orange and white jail clothes. His answers to Judge Keeley were short. Was he willing to waive a new preliminary hearing on the amended charge? “Yes sir.” Did he understand his rights? “I do.” What is your plea? “Guilty, your honor.”
Keeley noted that the crime is a level 1 person felony, which can carry a prison sentence ranging from 147 months to 653 months (approximately 12 to 54 years), depending on Stephens’ criminal history, and a fine of up to $300,000. And the judge is not obligated to base the sentence on a plea negotiation. A pre-sentencing evaluation was ordered to determine Stephens’ criminal history “score,” but attorneys have agreed they believe it will be a “D” on state sentencing guidelines. That means they expect the sentence to be 253 months, or 21 years, one month in prison. If Stephens is ever released, he must register as a violent offender for the remainder of his life.
Part of the plea agreement is that Stephens won’t get a lesser sentence, even if it turns out his criminal history score is lower than anticipated. But it also means the state won’t ask for a jury to hear evidence so it could ask for a longer sentence based on the aggravating factors of the crime: the age of the victim and Stephens’ attempt to hide her body.
Carter said the state was prepared to present a factual basis for the defendant’s guilt, but Stephens stipulated to the facts set out in previous court hearings and in affidavits.
The case
During a pretrial hearing in January, Carter presented 12 pieces of evidence, including interviews and a statement Stephens reportedly wrote and signed as “an apology letter” to the girl known as Ivy, who was reported missing from her Hoisington home on Tuesday, March 20, 2018.
Stephens was the boyfriend of Iviona Lewis’s mother and was at her home in Hoisington when people showed up to search for the missing girl. It turned out that she had actually gone missing two days earlier, on March 18.
He later consented to lengthy interviews at the Kansas Bureau of Investigation office in Great Bend, where he wrote the “apology letter” and agreed to direct Hoisington Police Captain Josh Nickerson to a rural location where the remains of the child were found on March 21 in a black trash bag in a ditch.
