Death sentence imposed
By The Emporia Gazette (Contact)
Originally published 02:00 p.m., January 24, 2008
Updated 02:00 p.m., January 24, 2008
EUREKA — The man who shot and killed a southeast Kansas sheriff has been sentenced to death.
A shackled Scott Cheever listened Wednesday as District Judge Mike Ward imposed the sentence of death that a jury set Nov. 1 after just two hours of deliberations. By law, a jury must agree that the death penalty should be imposed, but a judge must approve it.
Ward denied requests by Cheever’s lawyers to reconsider life without parole.
Cheever was convicted of capital murder for killing Greenwood County Sheriff Matt Samuels on Jan. 19, 2005. Samuels was gunned down in a rural farmhouse while serving arrest warrants on Cheever for allegedly stealing firearms from his stepfather and not reporting to his parole officer.
Cheever had been making methamphetamine in a house in the remote Hilltop area of Greenwood County.