Four Las Vegas teenagers accused of fatally beating their high school classmate have agreed to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter in a deal that will prevent them from being tried as adults, attorneys said Thursday.
The teens were originally charged in January as adults with second-degree murder and conspiracy in the November death of 17-year-old Jonathan Lewis Jr. A cellphone video of the fatal beating was shared on social media.
The agreement announced during a hearing Thursday before Clark County District Judge Tierra Jones calls for all four to be sent to juvenile court and face an indeterminate prison sentence in a juvenile detention center. The agreement was first reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal Magazine.
Deputy District Attorney John Giordani said if any of the teens back out of the agreement, all four will be charged again in adult court. “The offer is contingent on everyone agreeing,” Giordani said. The Associated Press is not naming the students because they were minors at the time of the Nov. 1, 2023, attack, he said. 8 News Now.
The four were among nine teens arrested in connection with Lewis’ death. He was attacked just off the campus of Rancho High School, where all were students. Authorities have said the students agreed to meet in an alley to fight over a vape pen and wireless earbuds they had stolen from a friend of Lewis’. Lewis died from his injuries six days later.
Defense attorney Robert Draskovich, who represents one of the four defendants, called the deadly fight a tragedy but argued that sentencing the students for murder as adults would have been a second tragedy. “This plea deal allows my client to graduate from high school, move on with his life and become a productive citizen,” Draskovich told The Associated Press on Thursday.
Draskovich said he would ask at the sentencing hearing that his client be released from prison with credit for time already served. He acknowledged that his client was among those who kicked Lewis while he was on the ground, but noted that a jury would have seen video showing that at least one person in Lewis’ group had a knife.
Melissa Ready, Lewis’ mother, said KLAS-TV On Thursday in Las Vegas, she said she was “perplexed” by the plea agreement. She said the Clark County district attorney’s office had informed her that the teens were going to plead guilty to murder in the adult court system.
Giordani declined to comment after the hearing but provided a statement from Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson’s office acknowledging Ready’s comments and “the pain (she) is going through as she grieves the loss of her son.” The statement defended the resolution of the case as a balance between “careful consideration of the heinous facts” and potential legal challenges prosecutors would have faced at trial.
The release notes that the juvenile court is “best suited to punish defendants for their atrocious conduct,” while also offering rehabilitation. In Nevada, a teen facing a murder charge can be charged as an adult if he or she was 13 or older when the crime occurred.
A homicide detective who investigated the case told a grand jury last year that surveillance and cellphone video showed Lewis removing his red sweatshirt and punching one of the students. The suspects then threw Lewis to the ground and began punching, kicking and stomping him, the detective said. A student and an area resident drove Lewis, who was severely beaten and unconscious, back to campus after the fight. School staff called 911 and attempted to help him.
