In June of 1998, nearly eight years after the Rev. Leo Heineman was laid to rest in a Delaware County cemetery with all the pomp and splendor the church could muster for a martyr's funeral, David G. Stewart was convicted for his part in the priest's slaying.

Though he had long since deeded his truck farm to the priest's estate to settle a wrongful-death suit, Stewart was not convicted of murder. He was convicted of manslaughter.

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The way Dennehy sees it, the jury, which counted two Catholics among its number, found it difficult to accept the largely discredited official version that Heineman had been slain in cold blood and that he had done nothing more to deserve it than try to counsel a friend through a rocky patch in a loveless marriage.

But the jury also failed to embrace Stewart's contention that he shot only in self-defense.

"I talked to the jurors. Some of the jurors afterwards I sort of understood their logic," Dennehy said. "They said, 'Look, we agreed that he was defending himself...even though the priest was threatening to put a beating on him.'

Unfortunately, Dennehy said, "for self-defense to work as a defense, you have to reasonably believe that if you don't take the actions you do that death or serious injury is going to result. The jury said that if the priest had a weapon in his hand -- a knife, a stick, a rock - (they) probably would have said it was justified...But since the priest didn't have a weapon...(they) thought it was unreasonable to believe that he was going to go further than slugging (Stewart), that he would actually go to the point of causing (Stewart) serious bodily injury or death.

"Now...personally, I think David absolutely believed that the priest was going to use deadly force," Dennehy said. "But the...jury didn't quite buy all of that...I think what the jury thought is that David's own consumption of alcohol had clouded his mind a little bit. David was reasonable to believe that he was threatened, but...David probably overreacted to the degree of the threat."

In the end, Stewart was sentenced to a minimum of five and a maximum of 10 years in prison.

By the time of his trial, he had suffered two strokes, and was largely confined to a wheelchair. The state allowed him to serve his sentence at the Laurel Highlands facility in rural Somerset County in western Pennsylvania, a prison designed to provide long-term care for aged and ailing inmates.

On November 15, 2002, he died of natural causes while in custody at Laurel Highlands. He was 84.