LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) — Attorneys for a Charlestown, Indiana, man charged with murdering his wife in 2025 attempted Monday to have the charge dismissed in Clark County Circuit Court.
According to a news release from the defense, Stephen Gower’s defense attorney, Larry Wilder, alleges the Clark County Sheriff's Office read privileged attorney-client text messages in the case.
Wilder said the hearing will determine whether Gower's constitutional rights were violated while he was awaiting trial on the murder charge.
The judge on Monday considered the request but hasn't made a decision or released a timeline for when he will make a ruling.
On Aug. 4, court documents say Clark County sheriff's deputies and Charlestown police officers responded to a home in the 10400 block of Charlestown New Market Road in Charlestown after reports that Gower’s wife had shot herself.
The caller — identified as Stephen Gower — said Christina Gower used a gun to end her life. Despite initially telling officers his wife shot herself, police said Gower asked officers to "take me to jail" and "shoot me" while at the scene. Gower told investigators the gun used was a short-barrel AR-style rifle, which was located by responding officers.
Christina Gower's body was found inside the home "lying on the floor face up with significant blood pooling around the head." Police said she was half inside the master bedroom and half inside the hallway that connected to the kitchen and living room area.
She had been shot in the head, but a detective at the scene "did not observe visible burns or stippling to Christina's head or face that would be consistent with a close shot or contact shot to the head."
As officers began questioning Gower, he told them on the morning of Aug. 3, he had "found messages on Christina's phone indicating that she was talking to other men and indicated she was having an affair." He also told detectives he and his wife "had been consuming alcohol throughout the evening leading up to the early morning shooting."
He described a "series of escalating events, including verbal arguments and physical actions, such as breaking a chair and a light fixture in the spare bedroom."
According to court documents, Gower admitted to "holding his wife's wrist while they were on the kitchen floor to hold her down but denied any physical altercation beyond that." During the arguments that led up to the fatal shooting, Gower said he got a handgun from the bedroom, placed it next to his head, said he wanted to kill himself and said "he had hoped his wife would pull the trigger."
That gun was returned to the bedroom before he retrieved the rifle later in the evening. He said he also placed the rifle against his head, but "Christina was crawling around the residence due to intoxication."
Stephen Gower told officers he had asked to be arrested because "he believed it would be easier to go to jail than to explain the incident to his children and his wife's family."
A medical examiner performed an autopsy and determined the gunshot appeared to have been from several feet away or more and concluded that "Christina could not have self-inflicted a gunshot wound to herself from that distance."
While being held in the Clark County Jail, Gower was using the jail's electronic text messaging system to communicate with Wilder.
According to Wilder, the defense discovered the interception when the State complied with a court order to produce the evidence gathered in the case.
Wilder said this included copies of privileged text messages between him and Gower, which were read and retained by the sheriff's office.
"The Sixth Amendment to the United States Constitution guarantees every accused person the right to counsel, which includes the right to communicate privately with an attorney without government eavesdropping," Wilder said in a news release. "At Monday's hearing, the defense will ask the Court to dismiss the murder charge against Mr. Gower based on the State's violation of that right."
According to Wilder, the defense said in its court filings that it does not believe the Clark County Prosecutor's Office read the privileged messages or directed the jail to intercept them.
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