The 41-year-old former Kailua bartender no longer had to worry about going to jail, no longer had to bottle his thoughts about causing the death of one customer with a blow from a security flashlight while defending another.

Circuit Court jurors yesterday acquitted Stadtman of manslaughter in the Aug. 24 incident at D Coy's Sports Bar & Grill in which Mark McGrath, 36, died of a massive brain hemorrhage.

"It happened so fast," said Stadtman, who testified that he swung at McGrath after his face suddenly turned to hate and he pushed a customer to the concrete floor.

While Stadtman made plans to send out resumes to return to a "normal life," McGrath's family fought tears outside the court.

"My husband of nine years is dead," said Trudi McGrath.

"My beautiful brother is dead and the man who killed him is walking free," said McGrath's sister, Rosaleen Todd.

Kevin McGrath said he hardly recognized his brother from the characterizations in court.

David Hayakawa, Stadtman's attorney and deputy public defend

er, said two of the victim's friends who described McGrath's faces of hate and mood swings made a difference in the verdict.

"These two knew the deceased well and confirmed that he instantaneously transformed himself into a state of rage," he said.

Harry Olsen, McGrath's friend who testified, said he knows he will be "a cursed name in the McGrath family." But he said he would have felt remorseful his whole life if he had not testified.

"I'm not exactly tickled with the fact that my friend is dead, but there was a man in that courtroom whose life was at stake," Olsen said. "We had to give him a fair chance. We had a duty to him."

Circuit Judge Richard Perkins allowed the defense to reopen evidence after Hayakawa argued that Olsen and Dan Jenkins contacted him with information about McGrath's behavior.

Hayakawa said the state should not have charged Stadtman with manslaughter and that it was McGrath who brought violence into the neighborhood bar.

"When somebody dies and the jury returns this quickly, it clearly shows that (the act) was a defense of others," he said.

Deputy Prosecutor Rom Trader said Stadtman's response to McGrath was "extreme, unwarranted and unjustified."

Trader also said Stadtman should have stopped serving alcohol to McGrath, who had been at the bar for about four hours.

But Stadtman, who has tended bar on and off for about eight years with no fights, said McGrath appeared somewhat weird, but did not appear overly intoxicated.

He said he had no indication that McGrath had a blood-alcohol level of 0.293, more than three times the legal limit.

Stadtman said he would do the same thing in the same situation: "You have to get involved. That was my responsibility."