Jonathan Stewart

A man was sentenced Monday to 14 months in prison in connection with a stolen vehicle and an ensuing cemetery rampage, but the state dismissed the grave desecration charges.

Jonathan Lee Stewart, 25, of Carbondale, Kansas, was convicted in July 2022 of burglary as part of a plea agreement wherein the state dismissed one felony count of theft and 20 felony counts of grave desecration.

The charges relate to a series of events on Dec. 8, 2021. Stewart pleaded no contest to breaking into an outbuilding in the 90 block of North 300 Road before stealing a vehicle along with two other men. One of Stewart’s codefendants told police that Stewart damaged the gravestones when the stolen vehicle broke down near Clinton Cemetery, as the Journal-World reported. The other men, Jeffery Warren Ard, 44, of Topeka, and Eli John McCormick, 26, of Overbrook, were not charged in connection with the damaged graves.

Stewart was scheduled to be sentenced in August 2022, but he failed to appear, and an arrest warrant was issued. In October 2024, Stewart was finally arrested “by chance” when a Kansas Highway Patrol trooper stopped him and arrested him on suspicion of drug possession and child endangerment.

On Monday, his attorney, Allyson Monson, asked Judge Stacey Donovan to grant Stewart probation for his burglary conviction or to reduce his prison sentence. Donovan ultimately denied Stewart’s probation request but reduced his prison sentence by over one year, from 27 months to 14 months.

Monson said that Stewart didn’t show up for his sentencing hearing in 2022 because his fiancée died shortly before the hearing. Since then, Stewart had become addicted to fentanyl while living on the streets of Topeka, Monson said. Since his arrest, Stewart has made strides toward recovery, Monson said, and a prison sentence would undo that progress.

She also asked Donovan to consider Stewart’s age at the time and the fact that he has not been convicted of any violent crimes. She then handed Donovan a drug evaluation and a letter from a supervisor at the Douglas County Jail detailing Stewart’s work ethic while working as a cook there.

Deputy District Attorney David Greenwald objected to a probation sentence, saying it would demonstrate to other offenders that skipping out on court proceedings and getting hooked on drugs could ultimately improve their disposition with the court. He said it was easy for someone like Stewart to follow the rules and seek treatment while in custody, but Stewart’s extensive criminal history showed that Stewart has had plenty of chances to get clean.

“Only by chance did a Kansas State Highway Patrol trooper stop him,” Greenwald said.

If not for that traffic stop, Stewart would still be free to do whatever he was doing for the last three years, Greenwald said. The traffic stop case is still pending charges, as the state awaits the KBI test on the drugs Stewart allegedly possessed. In addition to Douglas County, Stewart has multiple pending charges or court cases in other Kansas jurisdictions.

“Nothing changed until he was incarcerated,” Greenwald said.

Greenwald said that Stewart’s codefendants were each sentenced to about 14 months in prison for their convictions, and Stewart should be no different.

Donovan said she could not grant the probation sentence because she had serious concerns about Stewart’s whereabouts for the last few years but that she did hope that he was serious about his addiction recovery. She credited 237 days, or eight months, of time served against his 14-month sentence.

She also ordered Stewart to pay $11,383 in restitution once he is released from prison for a car that was destroyed during the burglary.

What wasn’t mentioned during the hearing was the damaged gravestones and the charges that were dismissed in connection with Clinton Cemetery.

“The heartache of seeing a gravestone of a loved one damaged like that is greater than the cost of any repair,” Lanaea Heine, board member and former president of the Clinton Cemetery District, told the Journal-World Monday.

She said that she wasn’t informed of the hearing or plea agreement; otherwise, she or another member of the board would have attended to share with the judge the toll the damage took on the families of the deceased and the community at large.

Heine said that 23 gravestones were damaged; for some of those, the families of the deceased personally cleaned or repaired the damage. Heine said that the cemetery was originally told that it would take thousands of dollars to repair all of the stones, but fortunately, a volunteer who had been studying grave repair stepped forward.

“She spent hours and hours of her time cleaning the stones,” Heine said.

photo by: Courtesy of Clinton Cemetery board

Damaged grave sites are pictured in Clinton Cemetery in Douglas County. The marker on the left is 111 years old.