Central Utah Correctional Facility inmate sentenced for murder of cellmate

Central Utah Correctional Facility inmate sentenced for murder of cellmate

A capital murder case was finally settled in Manti on Wednesday when 36-year old Steven Crutcher was sentenced for the murder of his cellmate at the Central Utah Correctional Facility in Gunnison in 2013.

The case had been schedule to go to trial in a few weeks, but Crutcher instead was sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole.  Crutcher earlier pleaded guilty to killing his 62-year old cellmate, Rolando Cardona-Gueton, on April 20, 2013 and making the death look like a suicide.

In addition to the murder charge, Crutcher pleaded guilty to two second degree felony aggravated assault charges from an incident at CUCF on July, 4, 2013.  He was sentenced to two terms of 1-15 years, and those sentences will run concurrent with the additional sentence.

Crutcher was already serving a sentence of 10 years to life in prison at the time for an aggravated kidnapping charge from a 2009 incident where he grabbed a female corrections officer at the Iron County Jail, dragged her into a port at the jail and produced what appeared to be a pipe bomb from under his shirt.  The bomb turned out to be fake.