sexually violating a woman as she died of a suspected drug overdose<\/a> in his apartment, then coldly dragging her corpse to an outside stairwell for some unlucky person to find.<\/p>\nBut Lewis, 76, had one thing going for him \u2014 his failing health. He had medical maladies that required hospitalization and were so serious that the Alameda County District Attorney\u2019s office became convinced his death was \u201cnear\u201d and agreed to his release, court records show.<\/p>\n
Six months later, Lewis is still breathing, his heart is still beating, and any good will he may have had from a judge or prosecutor is gone. On Oct. 27, Judge David Pereda ordered the Alameda County Sheriff to stick Lewis back into jail, citing his \u201cdrastically improved\u201d condition and the threat to the public it caused.<\/p>\n
\u201cMr. Lewis\u2019 health has dramatically improved and there has been no showing that his condition is significantly different from when he allegedly committed this horrendous act,\u201d\u00a0 Pereda wrote in his order. He noted that Lewis\u2019 attorney had, back in March, informed the court that Lewis was likely in his \u201clast moments\u201d and later stated that he could be going to hospice care soon.<\/p>\n
Prosecutors were initially persuaded to agree to Lewis\u2019 release to a hospital. When he failed to die, they moved for Pereda to jail him once again. The prosecution\u2019s motion cites a March message from the defense attorney, Deputy Public Defender George Arroyo, informing the prosecutor that he had \u201csad news\u201d that Lewis likely \u201cwill not be making it out of the hospital\u201d and that Arroyo will request a release order so that Lewis\u2019 sister can be there for \u201clast moments\u201d to avoid \u201cred tape\u201d and high costs.<\/p>\n
The prosecutor, Deputy District Attorney Olivia Suraci, wrote in a declaration that she only agreed to this because she felt assured Lewis would, in fact, die.<\/p>\n
\u201cHad I known the defendant would be healthy enough to be discharged from the hospital few months later, I would have objected to the (release),\u201d she wrote.<\/p>\n
For bail motions \u2014 unlike in criminal trials \u2014 a judge must assume that the charges against the defendant are true in determining his or her potential danger to the public. In Lewis\u2019 case, that\u2019s a particularly gut-wrenching task. Prosecutors say he filmed himself raping a dead or dying woman, dragged her body to a stairwell after burning and slapping her several times to confirm her death, then headed over to a police station with a completely bogus story about how he simply stumbled upon her dead body near his home.<\/p>\n
The woman showed no response to pain and appeared \u201cunconscious or dead\u201d on the video, police said in court records.<\/p>\n
Lewis allegedly invited the woman to his home on Aug. 31 after offering her drugs and $100 to have sex with him and clean his apartment on the 1300 block of 81st Avenue in Oakland. He claimed she smoked something white and powdery and he believed she succumbed to a drug overdose.<\/p>\n
Lewis\u2019 preliminary hearing has been tentatively scheduled for next week. He has pleaded not guilty.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"OAKLAND \u2014 Lester Lewis\u2019 chances of freedom seemed bleak. The allegations were horrific, even for a rape case,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":59992,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[34],"tags":[861,143,47341,145,144,47339,47340],"class_list":{"0":"post-83463","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-oakland","8":"tag-bay-area-crime","9":"tag-oakland","10":"tag-oakland-fentanyl-overdose","11":"tag-oakland-headlines","12":"tag-oakland-news","13":"tag-oakland-rape","14":"tag-oakland-rape-suspect"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=83463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/83463\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/59992"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=83463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=83463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=83463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}