Uncle and nephew, born into the same broken family, sat a few feet from each other in the courtroom Monday. Their destinies, for all the shared heritage, diverged long ago.
On the witness stand was Ralph Jones, 39, a married father of three who works as a middle school gym teacher and a track coach.
And there sat his nephew, the boy he once tried to raise, to rescue from a violent Denver known only to a few — Dexter Lewis, now 25, recently
Shortly after Jones earned his master’s degree, he had Lewis, then in middle school, move in with him in Ohio. “I was a kid trying to raise a teenager,” Jones said. “Parentally, there weren’t a lot of very good practices in Dexter’s childhood.”
Jones, representing a world Lewis could have known, testified for almost three hours about the boy he knew and the life he led —a life now in the hands of a Denver jury that must decide if Lewis is sentenced to life in prison or death by lethal injection. The trial is now in the second stage of the penalty phase, when mitigating factors are presented.
Jones’ attempt to be a “savior uncle,” as he said, did not work out. Lewis lied to him one too many times and was sent home to Denver after about eight months. Jones saw him for the first time again in court Monday, after more than a decade.
“I knew where he came from, and I knew where he was going back to,” Jones said. “The lion’s den.”
That den was on stark display in arguments and testimony Monday, what defense attorney Christopher Baumann called “the horror show that is Dexter Lewis’ life.”
Lewis was born in 1990 to a 17-year-old mother — Ralph Jones’ sister — and a 20-year-old father, Dexter Lewis Sr., a member of the Crips.
Tammesa Jones often fought physically with Lewis Sr. Baumann talked about 9-month-old Lewis, covered in blood at his mother’s feet, after Lewis Sr. stabbed her.
Lewis and his mother lived briefly in Phoenix but returned to Denver after Lewis Sr. was fatally shot, before Lewis’ fourth birthday.
And in Denver, Lewis grew up surrounded by violence, gangs, assaults, rapes.
Lewis’ mother beat him badly, Baumann said in his opening statement. On the stand, Ralph Jones told of one Fourth of July family gathering. Lewis, just 5, angered his drunken mother.
“Tammesa just went off on him, started physically punching or hitting him,” Jones said. “It was like how you would fight in the street, to a little kid. … She was punching him. … I’m not sure how many times.”
“It was extreme,” Jones said. “It was extreme.”
Lewis also saw his mother repeatedly “getting beat up, abused, assaulted” by his stepfather, Baumann said, before she would be dragged into the bedroom and raped.
“This was an all-too-familiar, post-beating sexual ritual,” Baumann said.
The late Lewis Sr. loomed large for the family, with pictures of him adorning the house and Lewis’ bedroom.
“It was almost like they worshipped him,” he said. “(Lewis) wanted to dress like him, look like him. And other relatives … kind of embraced that and projected that image on to him.”
“I think when you’re raised in that kind of environment, Jones said.
The argument that Lewis was a product of trans-generational violence will be limited. “The fact that other family members had a bad life, in other words, does not reduce Mr. Lewis’ culpability,” Judge John Madden IV ruled.
As defense attorneys argued that Lewis’ generational history should be allowed, they had assistance from a uniquely qualified source: Kristen Nelson, one of the lawyers on the Aurora theater shooter’s defense team.
Nelson was animated in the front row of the court, jutting out her hand in disbelief, shaking her head in disapproval and gazing up at the ceiling in exasperation. She exchanged whispers with one of Lewis’ attorneys, Jon Grevillius, as defense attorneys worked to counter prosecution objections.
For all the family horrors and violence, Baumann made clear he also will seek to use family as Lewis’ saving grace. He mentioned that Lewis’ 2-year-old daughter is beginning to ask questions.
“The question she most wants to know is when’s her dad coming home,” Baumann said of the girl, who has never been in the same room with her father. “Everyone in this courtroom knows the answer to that. The answer is never.”
