Death won’t be sought for mother charged in kids’ beating deaths

By Matt Pordum

Wednesday, Dec. 15, 2004 | 9:02 a.m.

A committee at the district attorney's office has determined not to seek the death penalty against a mother who claims Jesus told her to beat her two children to death with an aluminum baseball bat.

Sylvia Ewing, who has been diagnosed as schizophrenic, has pleaded not guilty to two counts of murder with a deadly weapon in connection with the September 2003 deaths of her children, Phillip, 8, and Julie, 4, in their apartment at Emerald Suites on Las Vegas Boulevard North across from Nellis Air Force Base.

Ewing is set to stand trial before District Judge Joseph Bonaventure on June 6. Her defense attorneys have said their most likely defense will be to plead insanity.

Her charges had been on hold since October 2003 when Bonaventure found Ewing mentally incompetent to stand trial and sent her to Lake's Crossing, the state mental hospital in Sparks. In August, however, doctors at the facility deemed Ewing competent after daily evaluations the past nine months made them conclude she had reached "a point where she was able to assist counsel in her case."

For the past several months Ewing, who has a sixth grade education and is a native of the Philippines, has been in the Clark County Detention Center where jail officials have said they would ensure that her psychiatric treatment continues.