On the night of July 26, 2006, after a vehicle stop in Stoughton, Massachusetts, 19-year-old Joshua Lewis was shot three times by Massachusetts State Trooper George Demos.
Lewis was taken to the hospital and treated for gunshot wounds to his forearm, right hip, and left buttock. The next day, while still in the hospital, he was arrested and charged with assault with the intent to murder, carrying a firearm without a license, possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number, and possession of a firearm while not in possession of a firearms indicator card.
Lewis’s trial began on October 17, 2007, in Norfolk County Superior Court.
Demos testified that he had arranged to meet with Trooper Gregory Keane at 6:30 p.m. at the Burger King on Route 27. He said that he had been driving behind a Nissan Maxima and noticed that the car’s occupants were looking back at him and making suspicious movements. The Maxima turned into the restaurant’s parking lot. Demos said he pulled in and talked with Keane, who was already there and had also noticed the Maxima, which had a failed inspection sticker. They pulled the car over when it left the Burger King.
Three people were in the vehicle. Lewis was in the back. Peter Le, who was 21 years old, was driving, and 23-year-old Ren Pho was in the front passenger seat.
Demos said that he noticed a strong odor of marijuana as he approached the car. He said he requested a license and registration from Le, who appeared to be nervous. Demos said he asked the men about the marijuana odor. Demos said that Lewis said that they had recently smoked in the vehicle but did not have any marijuana. Demos said he then focused on the front passenger, Pho, who appeared to be “very nervous.” Demos said he asked Pho to get out of the car. He said he frisked Pho and found a Beretta in Pho’s waistband, which he threw to the side while detaining Pho.
Demos said Lewis then ran from the car toward the Panera Bread on the other side of Route 27. Demos said he chased Lewis and repeatedly ordered him to stop.
Demos said that Lewis kept grabbing his waistband and ignoring his commands. Demos said that as they neared the Panera Bread parking lot, Lewis slowed down, reached for his right pocket, and pulled out a gun. Demos said that he ordered Lewis to drop the weapon, but that Lewis turned toward Demos and pointed the gun at him. Demos said he feared for his life and fired two shots at Lewis, both which hit him. Demos said Lewis was still standing, holding a gun and facing him. He said he fired a third time, hitting Lewis in the upper part of his left leg.
Keane testified that he arrived after Lewis was already on the ground. He said he found a loaded .38-caliber revolver near Lewis. He said the gun had a defaced serial number and eight rounds in the magazine, including one hollow-point bullet, although none in the chamber. Keane testified that when he asked Lewis about his age, Lewis answered: “It doesn’t matter…I’ll beat this. I’ll beat this again.”
Dennis DeNapoli, a city council member from nearby Brockton, testified that Lewis never fired the Colt. He said that after Lewis was shot, he and Demos approached Lewis as he was on the ground. DeNapoli said he saw a gun nearby, and he said that Demos asked him to move it farther away from Lewis. DeNapoli said he moved the gun and stood on the weapon to keep it safe.
Pho testified that both the Colt and Berretta were his and that Lewis was not armed. He said the Berretta had fallen out of his hand and come to rest between the seat and the door when Demos was first talking to him after the traffic stop. When Demos ordered Pho out of the car, the Berretta fell to the ground. Pho said Demos yelled “Gun,” frisked Pho, and found the Colt in Pho’s waistband.
When Lewis ran from the car, Pho said, Demos gave chase, still holding the Colt. Pho said he didn’t see Lewis face Demos, and he said it looked as if Lewis was trying to pull up his pants when Demos shot him.
Le, the other passenger, testified that Lewis was running away and did not have a gun in his hand. Le said that he heard Lewis utter a swear and say “I’m going to run” before taking off.
A bystander named Sean Donovan testified that he walked by Lewis twice within two minutes while Lewis was on the ground. He said that he did not see a gun the first time he walked by. The second time, he did see “a gun a little more than an arm’s length away.” By then, Donovan said, Demos was already standing over Lewis.
Lewis’s theory was that Demos had shot an unarmed man and tried to cover it up. He presented evidence that Demos never filed a standard form about the discharge of his weapon, that there were no fingerprints on the Colt, and that another trooper prepared the reports filed by Demos and Keane. Lewis also introduced his medical records, which said that one bullet entered his left buttock and broke his left leg. A second bullet entered the back of his right arm near the elbow. A third bullet entered his abdomen near his right hip.
During his closing argument, the prosecutor said: “I would suggest to you that the facts of this case show you at least one thing clearly, and that is how dangerous it is to be a state trooper or to be a police officer. On this date, Trooper Demos stopped a motor vehicle. It was just a routine traffic stop. There are three individuals in that vehicle. He and Trooper Keane told you about that. He has no way of knowing whether those three people are three people that are just coming from MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in a study group or if they’re three street thugs with guns and drugs, and that’s how it turned out on this date.”
The prosecutor returned to this description of Lewis, Le, and Pho later. “There’s no gray issues here now,” he said. “You either believe [the Commonwealth’s witnesses] or you don’t … You either believe them or you believe the other side. There’s nothing in between. Either the gun was planted, or the gun was on him. And that’s where it was, I’d suggest to you, on the street thug.”
The prosecutor also said, “The entire defense in this case, I’d suggest to you, is a sham.” He later added: “The lies here came from there. As you look over all of this evidence, I suggest to you that it will be obvious to you that the lies came from this table. And I’m not leaving out the attorney either, the questions that were asked and the way they were posed.”
On October 29, 2007, the jury convicted Lewis of assault with the intent to murder, carrying a firearm without a license/identification card, and possession of a firearm with a defaced serial number. He was sentenced to four to six years in prison.
Lewis appealed, asserting there had been insufficient evidence to support his conviction and that the state failed to prove beyond a reasonable doubt that Lewis had the intent to kill Demos. He said there was a lack of forensic evidence—including fingerprints or blood on the gun and magazine—despite significant bleeding from three gunshot wounds. The motion also said that Keane had misconstrued Lewis’s statement about beating the charges. In addition, the appeal said that the prosecutor had committed misconduct in his closing argument when he referred to Lewis as a “street thug” and when he disparaged the defense case as a sham.
The Massachusetts Appeals Court affirmed the convictions in 2012. It said the evidence was sufficient and that the trial judge’s instructions for the jury to disregard the prosecutor’s remarks limited the potential harm of these statements.
Lewis appealed. On May 14, 2013, the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court reversed the lower court and ordered a new trial based on the prosecutor’s remarks in closing argument. “The prosecutor's improper comments were extensive and provided the structure and thrust of his entire closing argument,” the court said. “Its powerful crescendo culminated in a condemnation of defense counsel as a liar among liars. Stated otherwise, this is not a case in which a fleeting, isolated, improper statement in an otherwise proper argument could, in the context of the entire closing argument, be deemed nonprejudicial. Here, the tenor of the entire closing argument of the prosecutor improperly disparaged the defendant and counsel and invited the jury to decide the case irrationally and on general terms.”
Three years later, on March 9, 2016, the state dismissed the charges. Lewis had been released earlier, but available records don’t indicate the date.
On July 26, 2018, Lewis filed a pro se civil-rights lawsuit in U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts, seeking compensation for his wrongful conviction.
In the lawsuit, Lewis said that the state had withheld exculpatory evidence in his case. A year after receiving a new trial, Lewis said, the Norfolk County District Attorney’s Office released evidence showing that someone had gone into Lewis’s hospital room and taken photos of his wounds while Lewis was heavily sedated. “The purpose of said photos was to help Trooper Demos concoct a false story of how the plaintiff was shot in an attempt to cover [Demos’s] reckless actions,” the lawsuit said. “Because there were no wounds in the front, he knew that if he were able to examine the plaintiff’s wounds, he would be able to furnish a better explanation.”
At the time of his filing, Lewis was again incarcerated. He said he would be released from prison in November 2018 and would be homeless. After his release, he failed to notify the court about a new address, as required under court rules, and a judge dismissed his lawsuit. He refiled the lawsuit a year later, and a separate judge dismissed it, also on procedural grounds.
– Sonia Arefadib, Tiffany Bechdikian, Yareli Hernandez, Savannah Parker, and Julio Valenzuela
Posting Date: 06-23-2025
