JUDGE FORESEES ANOTHER JUDGMENT

There were few stories sadder than the one that unfolded in suburban St. Louis where a man was convicted of injecting his son with HIV-tainted blood in hopes he would die of AIDS.

In sentencing Brian Stewart to life in prison, Judge Ellsworth Cundiff expressed the rage that was no doubt shared by countless parents who were horrified by what Stewart did.

The judge said injecting a child with a deadly virus "really puts you in the same category as the worst war criminal." Added Judge Cundiff: "I believe when God finally calls you, you are going to burn in hell from here to eternity."

Why would anyone, particularly a parent, do something so terrible? Prosecutors claimed Stewart wanted to avoid making child-support payments to his former girlfriend, the mother of the boy.

At the sentencing hearing, the mother also spoke of the death sentence on her son. She said her son's prison -- a life of tortured illness, "even has a torture chamber."