Man Accused In 2002 Death Sentenced To Year In Jail

ABINGDON, Va. – After 5½ years, the investigation into Christa Brae Hart’s death came to this: a voluntary manslaughter conviction; an effective one-year prison sentence; and no admission of guilt.
It was an emotionally wrenching end to the legal odyssey that has consumed Hart’s family since October 2002, when the 23-year-old Kingsport, Tenn., woman drowned in South Holston Lake.
A circuit court judge on Wednesday sentenced Charlie Theodore Stiltner Sr., 46, to 10 years in prison with all but one year suspended, and tacked on three years of active supervised probation.
Stiltner, the only person charged in Hart’s death, never said the word “guilty.” Instead, he entered an Alford plea, acknowledging that prosecutors had enough evidence to convict him of manslaughter.
What prosecutors did not have was a sufficiently strong case to pursue a second-degree murder charge, of which Stiltner had been indicted last July, said Dennis Godfrey, commonwealth’s attorney for Washington County.
“There are potential issues with the evidence,” Godfrey said Wednesday in court, explaining why he agreed to amend Stiltner’s charge. Prosecutors built their case on the testimony of witnesses who were not present at Hart’s death, and despite Stiltner’s multiple and conflicting statements, felt “it would be hard” to prove murder beyond a reasonable doubt.
“No one will be happy with it. I’m not happy with it,” Godfrey said of the plea deal.
The courtroom was not a happy scene.
Stiltner, escorted out by a bailiff, did not glance back. His wife and children walked quickly out of the public entrance.
Jackie Hale, Hart’s grandmother, wore an expression of blank shock.
Hart’s mother, Mickie McSwain, and younger sister, Jessica, broke into sobs on the bench, holding tightly to each other.
“The last three days have been horrible,” said McSwain when she emerged from the courtroom. Her appearance corroborated her statement.
Tears streamed out of the corners of her eyes, smudging her mascara. She wore a plastic bracelet from a hospital where – on the brink of a panic attack– she spent Tuesday night. One of her fingers was in a splint because she distractedly smashed the tip with a hammer.
On Wednesday, she was still not at peace with the plea deal.
“We were kind of divided about it,” she said of the family. “It was this or [Stiltner] walked, and I couldn’t bear the thought of him walking.”
“A year,” she said in a whisper, her voice breaking. “A year for a lifetime wasted.”
Stiltner and his family had no comment about the case prior to the sentencing, and his attorney, David Scyphers, did not immediately return a phone call on Wednesday.
During the recess before his hearing, Stiltner bought snacks from a vending machine, left the courthouse to smoke a cigarette, and at one point asked a reporter about the weather.
“Good for the garden,” he said of the rain.
It may never be clear what role Stiltner had in Hart’s death.
Among the statements he allegedly gave to police was that he and Hart had been present at a drug deal gone awry, and he may have “in self-defense caused her to end up in the lake,” Godfrey said in court.
In a different statement, Stiltner said he may have dreamed it, Godfrey said later in an interview.
“I wanted more,” the prosecutor, who appeared to be on the verge of exhaustion, said of the conviction. “I wish I could’ve gotten more.”
Judge C. Randall Lowe sentenced Stiltner to six months above the guidelines for voluntary manslaughter.
In delivering his verdict, Lowe noted the age of the case, saying it “probably raises as many questions as it does answers. ... Those answers are not likely to come.”

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