In June 2001, 39-year-old Damon Lewis was indicted by a grand jury in Hopkins County, Texas on charges of sexually molesting his 10-year-old stepdaughter, C.C., and the girl’s friend, M.N., in Sulphur Bluff, Texas.
The charges were based on an allegation from C.C. and M.N. that Lewis molested them during a sleepover at C.C.’s house sometime around June 2000.
In April 2001, M.N. told her mother that Lewis had molested her and C.C. M.N.’s parents notified a school counselor and the Hopkins County Sheriff’s Office. The school counselor notified the local Child Advocacy Center (CAC) where the two girls were interviewed. On May 3, 2001, C.C. was taken to a medical facility where she was examined by Kim Basinger, a Sexual Assault Nurse Examiner (SANE).
The next day, a sheriff’s deputy asked Lewis to come to the police station. Lewis waived his Miranda rights and told sheriff’s investigator Jim Wright that he was innocent. Wright asked Lewis if he would take a polygraph examination, and Lewis agreed.
On May 9, Wright drove to Lewis’s house to let him know a polygraph was scheduled for May 15. When Wright arrived, Lewis was packing his clothes and other belongings into a van and preparing to move out of the house he shared with C.C. and C.C.’s mother.
On May 15, Lewis left a message with Wright to let him know he couldn’t make the polygraph because he didn’t have a vehicle. Lewis said he would call back on May 21, but never did, and the polygraph examination never took place.
Meanwhile, Lewis moved near Paris, Texas, about 40 miles north of Sulphur Bluff, where he had lived before and had people to stay with. On July 3, 2001, a warrant was issued for his arrest. By that time, the grand jury had indicted Lewis on one charge of aggravated sexual assault of a child relating to C.C. and another charge of indecency with a child by contact relating to M.N. Lewis was accused of digitally penetrating C.C. The indecency with a child charge alleged that Lewis touched the genitals and breast of M.N.
On October 7, 2002, Lewis was pulled over in Paris for a traffic stop and arrested on the outstanding warrant. On October 10, 2002, attorney Roland Fergurson was appointed to defend Lewis. On November 18, 2002, Fergurson filed a motion for the appointment of a psychologist to assist in assessing any testimony from M.N. and C.C. There was no order or request for a ruling on the motion, and the record did not reflect that Fergurson retained an expert or investigator to assist in Lewis’s defense.
On December 3, 2002, less than two months after Fergurson was appointed and two days before jury selection began in Lewis’s trial, the prosecution amended the indictments by adding an additional count under each indictment for the second-degree felony offenses of indecency with a child alleging that Lewis had touched C.C.’s breasts. The prosecution also added four additional first-degree felony charges and four additional second-degree felony charges relating to C.C. Each information contained one count of aggravated sexual assault and one count of indecency with a child and alleged that these incidents occurred between September 1, 1998, and January 31, 2001.
Fergurson waived Lewis’s right to be indicted on those additional charges and also declined to take additional time to prepare for trial.
A jury was selected and sworn in 8th Judicial District Court on Thursday, December 5, 2002. The prosecution’s presentation of evidence started the following Monday.
M.N. testified that she spent the night at C.C.’s house two or three times before the night she said the incident happened. M.N. told the jury that on the night of the alleged incident, she and C.C. were sleeping next to each other in C.C.’s room in separate beds. She said her bed was up against the wall and had rails on three sides. M.N. testified that she was awake and C.C. was asleep when Lewis came in and started touching C.C.’s breasts and “private area.” M.N. said that C.C. woke up, and Lewis struck C.C. with the back of his hand. She said he then turned and started “messing” with M.N. by touching her breasts and private areas under her clothes. M.N. said C.C. cried, and Lewis left. She said that when C.C. asked M.N. if he did anything to M.N., M.N. said she told her that he did not.
C.C.’s mother testified that she met Lewis when C.C. was about three years old, and they lived together for many years as common-law husband and wife, raising C.C. together. She said that although Lewis and C.C. argued a lot, they were like father and daughter. She said that she never saw any hint that anything wrong was occurring between them.
C.C.’s mother testified that C.C. did not assert that Lewis had sexually assaulted her until after the investigation was triggered by M.N.’s claim. Even then, C.C. “never has really been real specific with me” about what allegedly had occurred, she testified.
C.C.’s mother testified that after the allegations were made, she took C.C. to C.C.’s grandparents’ house, told Lewis to move out, and brought C.C. to the CAC the next day. After Lewis left, she said she found a torn-up letter in a plastic bag that she pieced back together and turned over to the police. She said it was written by Lewis.
The letter—which was read aloud and admitted as exhibit 1—started off like a suicide note.
“[B]y the time you find this letter you would have ben [sic] told of my death,” the note said. In the letter, Lewis said he loved C.C.’s mother and C.C. The note was adamant that he would never knowingly harm C.C., but at one point said:
“I can not ask you to forgive me for what [C.C.] says I did to her because if I did this horrible thing to her I can never forgive myself, I do know that I could never consily [sic] do something like that to my daughter and if I did it unconsily I can not live with it. . . .”
C.C. testified that her relationship with Lewis changed when she was about nine years old. She said he yelled at her a lot and started touching her. She said he touched her under her clothes and inside her vagina. She said she didn’t know how many times it happened and couldn’t recall exact times, dates, or her age when these things happened.
Asked about specific incidents, she said it happened once in a living room, and once when she was sick and went to lay down in Lewis’s bedroom, and both those times he touched her genitals, but not her breasts. She thought she was about 10 years old when that happened.
C.C. remembered M.N. staying the night with her but didn’t recall anything unusual happening that night. Instead, she remembered falling asleep with M.N. while watching a movie.
Deputy Wright testified that he watched C.C. and M.N.’s CAC interviews and arranged for C.C. to undergo a forensic exam the next day. No exam was scheduled for M.N. Wright also testified about his meeting with Lewis on May 4, 2001.
The prosecution asked the court to allow Wright to testify about Lewis’s agreement to take a polygraph and failing to show up as evidence of Lewis’s consciousness of guilt. Fergurson told the trial court that he agreed the consciousness of guilt evidence was admissible. Wright then testified that Lewis had agreed to submit to a polygraph and ultimately did not return to the station.
CAC program director Kathy Smedley testified, and the prosecution was allowed to play C.C.’s recorded interview for the jury. Fergurson’s objection to introduction of the video of M.N.’s interview was sustained, but he did not similarly object to the video of C.C.’s interview until after that video had been introduced into evidence. His objection—that the interview could only come in if C.C. was unavailable to testify—was then overruled when the prosecution said the interview was allowed as an “outcry.”
During the interview, C.C. had said that Lewis molested her at least 15 times and that the last time had occurred in January 2001.
The prosecution’s last witness was Basinger, who had conducted the sexual assault examination of C.C. at Titus Regional Medical Center. Basinger testified that she was one of the first nurses licensed and certified as a SANE in Texas, that she had performed nearly 300 examinations, and that she had trained other nurses to do the examinations. Basinger testified that she looked for “telltale signs of trauma” such as “scar tissue” or “well healed tear[s].”
Basinger told the jury that the results of C.C.’s genital exam were “abnormal.” She said she saw “well-healed tears” on C.C.’s hymen that were abnormal and indicative of the sexual abuse that C.C. described. Basinger said, “Those tears are not supposed to be there.” Basinger testified that she was “trained in knowing the difference between . . . normal variations and trauma.” Basinger concluded, “The examination backs up her story.”
On December 11, 2002, the jury acquitted Lewis of the charges relating to M.N. The jury convicted Lewis of the remaining charges involving C.C.: four counts of aggravated sexual assault of a child and two counts of indecency with a child by sexual contact.
Lewis chose to have the jury assess punishment. He was sentenced to four 99-year prison terms for the aggravated sexual assault counts and two 20-year sentences for the indecency with a child charges, all to be served concurrently.
In 2004, the 6th District Court of Appeals in Texarkana upheld the convictions, despite ruling that the CAC video should not have been played because it was improper hearsay evidence. The court also found that the defense had waived any objection to the evidence about the polygraph.
The court concluded that the C.C. video evidence was harmless and rejected Lewis’s claim that Fergurson had provided ineffective assistance of counsel.
In 2006 and in 2018, Lewis sought post-conviction relief, but was unsuccessful. In August 2021, Lewis filed a complaint with the Texas Forensic Science Commission (TFSC), asserting that the SANE testimony was flawed and inaccurate. The TFSC referred Mr. Lewis’s case to the Office of Capital and Forensic Writs (OCFW), which accepted his case in 2022. Attorney Maro Robbins took over Lewis’s case.
In December 2024, Robbins filed a state law petition for a writ of habeas corpus based on an affidavit from Basinger recanting her trial testimony.
The 2022 affidavit said: “I was still pretty green back at the time of the trial. My guess is that I had only testified in court about five or six times when I testified about C.C.’s examination. At that time, I based my conclusions and testimony on my initial 1996 training.”
She said that since then, “the medical profession has obtained a clearer understanding of trauma or injury to the hymen. Although I testified to the best of my training and ability at the trial, I recognize now, due to additional training, experience, and developments in medical research, that some of my conclusions and testimony would be different today in significant respects. For example, were I to testify today, I would not conclude the examination result was ‘abnormal,’ and I would not testify that my findings ‘backs up’ C.C.'s reported allegations.”
“I would not talk about scar tissue on the hymen because studies have shown that hymens tend to heal quickly and to heal without scarring,” Basinger said.
Basinger said that she had reviewed her testimony at the trial, the photographs she took during the examination of C.C., and her report of the examination. “[I]f I were to offer my impressions…based on my current training and experience, I would not report finding a tear on C.C.’s hymen,” she said. “Instead, I would report that: (1) C.C. reported sexual contact during a non-acute examination, meaning it occurred more than 72 hours after the alleged contact, (2) my head-to-toe assessment of C.C. revealed no trauma, and (3) my detailed examination revealed a cleft in the hymen…While the cleft might have been a healed result of trauma to the hymen, it also could have been a normal feature of the hymen.”
The writ also included an affidavit from Dr. Joyce Adams, an expert on sexual assault nurse examinations. Adams said that “significant portions” of Basinger’s testimony were “inaccurate and inconsistent with both medical research and guidelines for physical examinations in cases involving allegations of child sexual abuse. It is my opinion that, were the examination conducted today under current guidelines, the results would most likely be ‘nonspecific’ or ‘normal,’ rather than ‘abnormal,’ meaning that the features of the hymen that Ms. Basinger attributed to sexual abuse could have been caused by sexual abuse, but they also could have resulted from other causes.”
In July 2025, Judge Eddie Northcutt approved findings of fact and a recommendation that Lewis’s convictions be vacated. The judge approved the findings that had been submitted jointly by Robbins and Will Ramsay, 8th Judicial District Attorney.
“Had the State been deprived of the seemingly scientific proof offered by Ms. Basinger, a preponderance of the evidence indicates that Mr. Lewis would not have been convicted,” the findings said. “Ms. Basinger can no longer confidently say, based on her physical examination, that C.C.’s hymen shows multiple signs of unusual trauma. Ms. Basinger’s revised opinion—that C.C.’s exam result was ambiguous—lacks the assurance that she gave jurors in 2002.”
The findings also noted that “none of the State’s other evidence similarly provided objective, scientific proof of the allegations. Because Ms. Basinger’s revised opinion substantially weakens the State’s case, the preponderance of the evidence indicates that Mr. Lewis would not have been convicted if it had been presented at trial. This conclusion is further supported by the fact that the jury declined to find Mr. Lewis committed the offenses that were not supported by Ms. Basinger’s expert assurances during the trial.”
On February 12, 2026, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals granted the writ, vacated Lewis’s convictions, and ordered a new trial. “Basinger’s recantation and the photographs constitute newly available evidence not previously ascertainable, and the evidence is admissible,” the court declared. “The jury’s verdict pattern of convicting on charges supported by medical evidence while acquitting on charges lacking medical corroboration suggests that the jury strongly depended on…Basinger’s now-recanted testimony.”
On March 18, 2026, the prosecution dismissed the charges, and Lewis was released.
– Maurice Possley
Posting Date: 06-08-2026
