When he saw the house he had burglarized earlier in the day featured on several television news programs, Peter Nicholas Lewis knew he had made a huge blunder.
The home he had burglarized that morning on Nov. 8 was Denver Police Chief Gerry Whitman’s.
“I thought that I messed up real good and it’s going to come back on me, my family and kids,” the 21-year-old Lewis said in a recent interview at the Denver County Jail.
But not even Lewis’ most pessimistic thoughts could have prepared him for what he is facing after pleading guilty this month to burglary. When Lewis is sentenced April 18, he could get up to 12 years in prison.
The potentially stiff penalty is for a nonviolent crime – Lewis’ first such conviction as an adult. That is one reason he believes his case is being handled differently from most because of his victim, he said.
He said a large number of police investigated his case and then tracked him to Des Moines, Iowa, where about two dozen officers, including SWAT team members, arrested him.
Once in Colorado, his bail was set at $35,000, which was high enough that his mother and girlfriend couldn’t afford to get him out, he said. When he was charged with an August burglary, his bail was set at $5,000.
If he had burglarized anyone else, Lewis said, he thinks he would be facing a probationary sentence at most, not hard time.
“I think they are going out of their way to make an example out of me,” Lewis said.
No bias, officials say
Whitman did not return a request for comment. Police officials said they would comment but never called back.
Many of Lewis’ complaints are with out-of-state police, prosecutors and a judge – who do not answer to Whitman.
The judge who set Lewis’ bail, for example, doesn’t answer to Whitman; nor does the prosecutor who entered a plea deal with Lewis.
“The case has not been different in any way here because of who the victim was,” said Lynn Kimbrough, spokeswoman for the Denver District Attorney’s Office.
Although Lewis could get 12 years in prison, he also could get probation, Kimbrough said.
Lewis acknowledges he has a mostly juvenile criminal record with a pending felony burglary case in Aurora that happened in August. The other Denver burglary case was dismissed when Lewis agreed to plead guilty in Whitman’s case.
According to police records, 21 people reported burglaries on Nov. 8, the same day Lewis said his accomplice threw a brick through a patio sliding door in the back of Whitman’s house in the Hampden Heights neighborhood.
Lewis said he and his partner, who picked Whitman’s house by chance, stole the .38 pistol Whitman stored in a lockbox, two electric guitars, a laptop computer, a cellular phone and about $200 in coins.
Of the 21 burglary cases reported that day, three have resulted in arrests, including the Whitman case. Three are under investigation and 15 have been labeled inactive.
“Like it was a murder”
Lewis said he was shocked to learn how many Denver police officers responded to Whitman’s case.
“They treated it like it was a murder case,” he said.
Court documents list 11 Denver police officers and police employees, including two crime-lab investigators, as having worked the case.
“Why are they coming at me so hard?” Lewis asked. “It’s probably because it was their chief. I really don’t think that’s fair at all.”
Of the 21 burglary cases reported on Nov. 8, crime-lab investigators responded to seven cases, said Lt. Stacey Goss of the Civil Liability Bureau.
About a month after the burglary, Lewis, who had been working at a Denver meat processing factory, fled to Iowa to hide with family.
He was walking to his car when five squad cars, including a gang-unit car, pulled up, he said.
Lewis said he believes it was unusual that Denver went to the expense of extraditing him to Colorado even though he was accused of a nonviolent crime.
Darryle Brown, spokesman for the Denver Sheriff’s Department, said that only those facing misdemeanor charges are not extradited from other states because of expense. All suspected felons are extradited, and that is dictated by the courts, not police, he said.
Back in Denver, Lewis said he cooperated with police by admitting his involvement and telling them who his accomplice was, he said. Records show the case against his partner was closed, but the disposition was not clear Wednesday.
Plea deal called routine
Lewis entered a plea deal in which prosecutors dismissed the August burglary case against Lewis in exchange for his guilty plea in the burglary of Whitman’s home.
Kimbrough said the plea deal offered Lewis is not unusual in situations where suspects face two separate criminal cases.
“The chief of police isn’t the first or last high-profile victim. We treat them all the same,” Kimbrough said.
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
