OAKLAND — A 77-year-old man has been released from jail after pleading no contest to raping a woman as she lay dying in his apartment, and police say he left her corpse on a staircase after her death.
Lester Lewis, of Oakland, pleaded no contest to a rape charge in June. On Oct. 13, he was released from jail, after racking up enough good behavior credits to fulfill a three-year jail sentence, which was cut in half to 18 months under the terms of the plea deal, court records show.
Lewis was charged in 2024 with rape of an unconscious person. He allegedly picked up the woman from another part of Oakland and offered drugs plus $100 to have sex with him and clean his apartment on the 1300 block of 81st Avenue in Oakland. He claimed that the agreed-upon transaction occurred shortly after they met, police said.
But after consuming drugs, the woman died of a suspected overdose. Authorities allege he raped her as she was dying, but the defense suggested at Lewis’ preliminary hearing that prosecutors couldn’t prove she wasn’t dead at the time of the alleged sexual assault.
Death lurked around the case in other ways; in 2025, a judge released Lewis after receiving assurances from his attorney that Lewis was near death and likely to succumb to a medical problem at a hospital. When Lewis remained alive months later — his health having bounced back significantly — he was returned to jail with the charges still pending, court records show.
Lewis’ lawyer also argued in court filings that police unlawfully arrested him by keeping him handcuffed for hours and then interrogating him before he’d been implicated in the crime. After the case was resolved, police returned more than $2,200 in cash seized from Lewis to a loved one, court records show.