Witnesses say Gerald Patrick Lewis showed first signs of remorse at sentencing
repost
Mobile
Register newspaper:
February 12, 2000
Witnesses say Gerald Patrick Lewis showed first signs of remorse at
sentencing
02/12/2000
By LEE DAVIDSON
Staff Reporter
BAY MINETTE - Gerald Patrick Lewis got what his attorneys say he wanted
- a
death sentence - on Friday. Two people present for the proceeding said
it
marked the first time they had seen Lewis display any remorse.
Judge Lyn Stuart in Baldwin County Circuit Court sentenced Lewis to
death,
following the recommendation of jurors who convicted him in December for
the
1998 capital murder of Misty McGugin, 21, of Saraland at a Causeway
motel.
But before Lewis faces execution - whether in the electric chair or by
lethal
injection - he could receive two more death sentences and one sentence
of life
without parole if convicted for his confessed string of murders since
1992.
The Baldwin sheriff's department was scheduled Friday to transport Lewis
from
his cell block at the county Corrections Center in Bay Minette to death
row at
Holman Prison in Atmore.
Lewis' attorneys, Rusty Pigott of Foley and Harold A. Koons III of Bay
Minette,
said Lewis did not want them to present evidence in his defense during
the
sentencing. They said Lewis was ready to die.
Legal moves by Lewis' lawyers, and lingering debate about his
competency, had
led Stuart to delay the sentencing phase of his trial from January.
District Attorney David Whetstone said a jury found Lewis competent to
stand
trial. "He's not a crazy man. He's a calculated killer. He stalks women
with
brown hair who are relatively young and he likes to have sex with them
as they
are dying," Whetstone said. "This is a guy who killed because he liked
killing.
I can't see how any judge or jury would hand down anything other than a
death
sentence for this man."
Lewis confessed to McGugin's killing - and several others in Georgia and
Massachusetts - after his April 1998 arrest in Mobile County in the
slaying of
Kathleen Bracken of Swampscott, Mass. At the time, he showed Baldwin
investigators the way to McGugin's body, which he had stashed in a
wooded area
near Loxley.
Immediately following his sentencing, Lewis displayed his first sign of
remorse, said Whetstone and McGugin's grandmother Delores Elmore of
Chickasaw.
"He looked me straight in the eye and said he was sorry," Elmore said.
"I was
shocked because - unless he's a great actor - you could truly see he was
sincerely remorseful. It surprised me, but at the same time it hurt me.
I can't
explain why."
Prosecutors and other lawyers soon will determine where Lewis next
stands
trial, Whetstone said.
Lewis, a former Daphne resident, has yet to be tried for murder in
Mobile in
the Bracken case or on two counts of capital murder in Georgia in the
1992
slaying of Patricia Grimes and her unborn child.
Mobile District Attorney John Tyson has said he wants Lewis to stand
trial in
Mobile first, even though that is not a death penalty case. He said he
believes
that such a trial would not dramatically delay Lewis' subsequent trial
in
Georgia.
Authorities in Georgia also want Lewis to help find the body of another
woman
he claimed to have killed there.