SAN DIEGO — Richard Tuite who is known for being acquitted in the 1998 stabbing death of 12-year-old Stephanie Crowe is once again in trouble with the law. Tuite, age 50, pleaded not guilty in court Friday to a single felony county of being an ex-convict on jail property at the Central Jail downtown.
If convicted of the felony count and a prior strike on his record, Tuite faces a maximum of six years in prison. He's being held on $20,000 bail.
Tuite was acquitted in 2013 of a voluntary manslaughter charge after a second trial. He was convicted of the same charge in 2004, but a federal appeals court in 2011 ruled that Tuite didn't get a fair trial because a judge limited cross-examination of a prosecution witness.
Tuite's original sentence was 13 years in prison for the manslaughter count and four years, four months behind bars for escaping from custody at the downtown courthouse and offering a deputy $24,000 to help him escape.
Before Tuite was prosecuted, Stephanie's brother, Michael Crowe, and friends Joshua Treadway and Aaron Houser were accused of her murder, and police extracted confessions. However, the admissions were later ruled to have been coerced by Escondido police and an assisting Oceanside officer under harsh interrogation tactics. The case against the boys was dismissed on the eve of their trail when new DNA testing showed spots of Stephanie's blood on the two shirts Tuite was wearing on the night of the murder.
Michael Crowe, Treadway and Houser testified during Tuite's retrial that they had no involvement in Stephanie's murder.
Tuite was in the area of the Crowe residence the night Stephanie was stabbed to death, looking for woman named Tracy. Prosecutors theorized that Tuite wandered into the Crowe home and killed Stephanie.
Jurors who voted to acquit Tuite said they believed the defense theory of contamination, that blood from the crime scene somehow was transferred onto Tuite's clothing.
Tuite also is a registered sex offender, stemming from a misdemeanor conviction in 1999 of harassing two teenage girls on a bus. Court records show he was charged twice last year with misdemeanor counts of failing to register as a sex offender.