Mark Lewis had a bittersweet moment with his 15-year-old daughter Thursday afternoon as 12 jurors deliberated whether he was guilty of a murder charge that could send him to prison for the rest of his life.
Lewis hugged and quietly talked with her in a clearly emotional moment between father and child, him sitting in the front row of the courtroom seating area, her in the second, with other family members nearby and two bailiffs standing over them.
Earlier that morning, the daughter, Alisha Lewis, had provided prosecutor Charlotte Herbert another piece in the body of circumstantial evidence that helped point jurors to their unanimous decision on Lewis late Thursday afternoon: guilty of second-degree murder in the strangulation of Kaitlin M. Aydell, 13, of French Settlement.
Jurors took about three hours to render their verdict after a little more than a day and half of testimony and argument. The prosecution rested shortly before lunch Thursday as did Lewis’ defense, without calling a witness but relying on the cross-examination of prosecution witnesses.
Assistant District Attorney Herbert, District Attorney Scott Perrilloux and Kaitlin Aydell’s mother, Danette Aydell, hailed the jury’s verdict.
“It’s over. The justice that we wanted … finally got here,” Danette Aydell told reporters as she emerged from the courthouse.
Her comments came after she and other family members and supporters shared a few moments inside the glass walls of the Livingston Parish Courthouse lobby quietly in emotional embrace while television cameras peered at them from outside.
Cameras are not allowed inside the courthouse.
Judge Brenda Bedsole Ricks of the 21st Judicial District set Lewis’ sentencing for 1:30 p.m. March 19, but a second-degree murder conviction brings a mandatory sentence of life in prison without benefit of parole.
Aydell disappeared from her home shortly after 3 p.m. Feb. 1, 2007, and was killed either on Feb. 1 or Feb. 2, according to court testimony Thursday.
Herbert would tell jurors in her closing argument that she really did not want to have to call Alisha Lewis. But on cross-examination Wednesday, Shawn McKee, the assistant district attorney defending Mark Lewis, had raised the question of a trip Aydell took with Lewis and other members of the family just weeks before Aydell’s disappearance.
Key pieces of evidence used at trial were found in the back seat area of Lewis’ extended cab pickup truck and were tied to Aydell through DNA testing, including two streaks of blood and three of eight samples of suspected blonde hair. Kaitlin Aydell, the 5-foot-5-inch basketball player nicknamed “Legs,” had blonde hair.
Herbert had Alisha Lewis explain from the witness stand how Aydell sat in the front seat of Mark Lewis’ 2006 Chevrolet pickup next to her “daddy” during the mid-January visit to see Lewis’ ailing mother at the hospital.
Alisha Lewis testified she and her two sisters, all of whom are from Mark Lewis’ first marriage, sat in the back while Mark Lewis’ stepson sat in the front with Aydell.
“We always sat in the same place,” said Alisha Lewis, who was close to tears throughout her testimony.
Mark Lewis eventually began getting tears in his eyes near the end of her testimony and as his head swiveled to follow his daughter leaving the stand.
Despite the emotional punch, that testimony helped Herbert to bring home points she had spent a day and a half establishing at trial and to deflect McKee’s argument that the circumstances built up against Lewis were from investigators who had developed “tunnel vision.”
In closing arguments, Herbert speculated for jurors that Aydell’s hair and blood got in the truck’s back seats, not from any earlier trip with Lewis, but because Lewis had put Aydell’s dead body there before he dumped it in the New River Bayou in Ascension Parish.
Herbert speculated that Lewis had strangled Aydell when he tried something at his house the afternoon of Feb. 1 while Aydell’s watchful mother was away at work as was Lewis’ wife. Aydell rejected the pass and was killed, Herbert theorized.
Herbert also recalled testimony Wednesday that Lewis’ computer had evidence that pornographic Web sites were being accessed through most of the day Feb. 1 until about 1:51 p.m. and that his truck was seen at his house as late as 2 p.m.
Herbert reminded jurors of testimony they heard Thursday morning from Dr. Gilbert Corrigan, the pathologist with the East Baton Rouge Parish Coroner’s Office who performed Aydell’s autopsy.
Corrigan had said that the severe manual strangulation inflicted on Aydell could have caused her nose to bleed, strangulation so strong that a small bone in her neck, the hyoid, broke.
Herbert also reminded jurors of testimony about the search and rescue dog that looked for Aydell’s scent. The dog showed interest in the back of Lewis’ truck at the Louisiana State Police Crime Lab days after her disappearance, according to testimony.
“I recognize that this is a circumstantial case, but all the circumstances point to that man, nobody else,” Herbert said, pointing at Lewis, during her closing arguments.
About an hour before the verdict was rendered, jurors sent a note to Judge Bedsole Ricks informing her they had questions including a definition of “beyond a reasonable doubt” as well as the charges they were to consider.
After some argument from McKee, Bedsole Ricks agreed to re-read all jury instructions. Seventeen minutes after jurors returned to deliberation, Bedsole Ricks announced, at about 4:40 p.m., that jurors had a verdict.
McKee, in his closing arguments, had asked jurors “not just go along to get along,” but to make sure that each juror’s feelings are heard on the evidence, the witnesses’ credibility and “what it all means.”
Juror John Griffitt, 36, said after the panel was dismissed that jury members were professional and methodical in reviewing the evidence and asked questions Thursday because of the sentence Lewis faced.
“We just wanted to be absolutely certain,” Griffitt said as left the courthouse.
Griffitt said “the complete development of the DA’s case” swayed him and other jurors. Several other jurors declined comment, but McKee took solace in that jurors took their time in deciding the verdict.
“They really deliberated,” he said. McKee said he plans to seek a re-trial, which may delay sentencing.


Source: The Advocate
Photo: BILL FEIG