Mentally ill man cleared in case, still must register as sex offender

A 20-year-old mentally ill man has been cleared of criminal wrongdoing for exposing himself to a toddler.

It's the second time in six months that Gregory Eugene Stewart III, who has addresses in England and Little Rock, has been acquitted of criminal charges on mental-health grounds. He'll have to register as a sex offender under the order signed Thursday by Pulaski County Circuit Judge Barry Sims.

Stewart has been in custody since his January 2013 arrest. He was committed to the State Hospital in July and will remain there under court order indefinitely, court filings show.

State doctors who examined Stewart after his lawyers raised questions about his mental health have diagnosed him with schizophrenia and marijuana abuse, court records show.

Stewart was charged with sexual indecency after an acquaintance reported catching him masturbating while standing over her sleeping 3-year-old daughter on Christmas night 2012 at a Healy Street home in North Little Rock, where Stewart regularly visited, court records show.

He did not stop until the woman got her husband, and then Stewart ran out of the house, court records state. He returned to the home the next day and the woman called police, but he ran away and was not arrested until about two weeks later.

After he had been in jail about a month, Stewart was charged with aggravated robbery after detectives linked him to a November 2012 armed robbery attempt on Betty Smith outside the Handi Pantry on Eureka Gardens Road.

Smith had been accosted by a teenager with a gun while putting her groceries away, but had run into the store, and the teen fled without money, police said. Investigators had surveillance video of the robber from a store camera.

Stewart was acquitted in the case by reason of mental illness in December after a hearing before Circuit Judge Herb Wright.

According to his most recent mental evaluation, Stewart could not control himself and was not able to tell right from wrong at the time of the incident with the little girl.

The report shows that questions were first raised about his mental health when he was 14 because of his anger. He was treated for suicidal depression at 16, and when he was committed to the State Hospital last year, he reported that he had been hearing voices regularly since he was in the 10th grade.

He said he was under the influence of terrifying shadowy humanoid creatures that require him to do 1,000 push-ups a day and believed he was a god with special powers, including the ability to control minds, the report shows.

Metro on 06/08/2014

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