A Lancaster County jury found Eric F. Lewis guilty of second-degree murder Monday after a weeklong trial.
LORI PILGER and CORY MATTESON / Lincoln Journal Star | Posted: Monday, January 12, 2009 12:00 am
A Lancaster County jury found Eric F. Lewis guilty of second-degree murder Monday after a weeklong trial.
Jurors got the case for deliberation at 11:25 a.m. and returned to the courtroom at 5 p.m. Lewis was not there to greet them.
“He chose not to be in court,” his court-appointed attorney, Stuart Mills, told Lancaster County District Judge Paul Merritt Jr.
Merritt asked Mills if he told Lewis he could be there, if he promised to act civilly.
“I attempted to,” Mills said.
Lewis was found guilty of punching Dr. Louis Martin, a psychiatrist at the Lincoln Regional Center, twice in the face on July 23, 2007. Martin died from his injuries 10 days later.
Jurors got the case for deliberation Monday without hearing from Lewis, as well. He was removed from the courtroom after calling the judge racist.
Lewis, 37, launched into a rant at Merritt Monday after the judge denied his request for a continuance to the afternoon. Lewis said he wasn’t seeing eye to eye with Mills and disagreed with his plan to call only Lewis to the stand.
Lewis said he had money to hire his own attorney and wanted him to come to court Monday afternoon.
“We can’t go no further,” Lewis said.
“Oh, we are going further. The question is whether you are going to be civil,” Merritt said.
Lewis’ voice grew louder. He said the trial was neither fair nor just and that Mills wasn’t going “to deliberate my case,” then turned his anger at Merritt, calling him a racist obscenity.
Merritt had guards remove Lewis from the courtroom and said Lewis had given up all the rights that come with being present — including the right to testify in his own defense.
When the jury was brought in, Mills said the defense rested.
In his closing argument, Deputy Lancaster County Attorney Andy Jacobsen told the jury it didn’t have to speculate about what Lewis’ intentions were when he brutally beat Martin.
“His words alone show you what his intentions were, and that was to kill Dr. Martin,” he said.
Jacobsen said Lewis was motivated by a hearing in a Douglas County courtroom five days earlier, at which Martin testified that Lewis wasn’t taking medication he needed for his mental illness. He has been diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic.
The assault on Martin happened less than an hour after another psychiatrist showed Lewis a court order allowing regional center staff to force the medication on him.
Lewis, who has said he wanted to leave the regional center and go back to jail, then packed his belongings, put the box by a door and sat at a nearby table, he said.
“Eric Lewis knew he was going to move, and he made it happen,” Jacobsen said.
Lewis hit Martin with such force, he said, that it was like using a baseball bat on someone’s head. It broke Martin’s sinuses, bruised his brain and caused a 4-inch skull fracture, where his head hit the wall, before he fell against the wall “like a rag doll.”
“There’s no question about it. He’s guilty of second-degree murder,” Jacobsen said.
Mills told the jurors before they reviewed the evidence that they’d see one thing was clear: No one, including Eric Lewis, knew Martin was coming in the door when he did that day.
Mills discounted testimony from one security specialist, who said Martin’s arrival had been announced, because another witness contradicted it.
Mills seemed to lay some of the blame for the incident on the regional center itself. He said the psychiatrist who showed Lewis the court order didn’t have the experience to treat him. And, he said, the only concern staff seemed to have that day was that Lewis was going to try to escape.
“This was a manslaughter case a year and a half ago. This was a manslaughter case (when the trial began). This is a manslaughter case today,” Mills said.
The jury had the choice of finding Lewis guilty of second-degree murder, guilty of manslaughter or not guilty.
The difference between second-degree murder and manslaughter is whether Lewis intended to cause Martin’s death.
Mills said after the verdict was read that he believed jurors took the question into careful consideration, given the amount of time they deliberated.
Lewis’ sentencing is set for April 6. The second-degree murder conviction carries a minimum 20-year sentence a maximum of life in prison.
Merritt ordered Lewis to appear at that hearing.
Reach Lori Pilger at 473-7237 or lpilger@journalstar.com. Reach Cory Matteson at 473-7438 or cmatteson@journalstar.com.