A Texarkana man accused of capital murder in the beating death of his 4-year-old son appeared Monday afternoon for a final pretrial hearing.
Jury selection is scheduled to begin this morning at the Bowie County courthouse in New Boston, Texas, in the trial of Benearl Jermane Lewis, 25. Lewis is facing life without the possibility of parole if found guilty of capital murder in the March 6 death of D'Money Lewis. The state is not seeking the death penalty.
Lewis appeared with Texarkana lawyer Derric McFarland on Monday before 5th District Judge Bill Miller in a first-floor courtroom of the Bi-State Justice Building in Texarkana.
Assistant District Attorney Lauren Richards said she has filed a motion to have one of the state's witnesses testify on closed-circuit television Wednesday morning. Miller said the court will take up the motion, and any objections to it McFarland raises, before opening statements begin Wednesday.
McFarland said family members are providing street clothes for Benearl Lewis to wear during the trial. He has been in custody since his arrest in March.
At the time of D'Money's death, a Child Protective Services care plan-with the provision that Benearl Lewis not be left alone with D'Money-had been in place. But D'Money's mother, Khadijah Wright, allegedly left D'Money and his older brother alone with Benearl Lewis when she went to work.
Wright allegedly left her job about 2 p.m. March 6 at a local manufacturing plant, without clocking out or telling anyone she was leaving, after receiving a text from Lewis that there was an emergency. A little more than two hours later, the couple came upon a traffic accident being worked by Texarkana, Texas, police at West Seventh Street and Bishop Lane. The couple told officers they had a child in the car who was unresponsive and not breathing and that they lived in the 200 block of Redwater Road in Wake Village.
While in cardiac arrest, D'Money was taken by ambulance to Wadley Regional Medical Center. Wake Village police Investigator Todd Aultman's report states he observed a large area of bruising on the boy's back and "strap" marks on D'Money's legs and back. Medical staff members at Wadley told Aultman the boy was suffering from a brain bleed and also bruising to his back and chest, "as if he had been kicked."
After initial treatment at Wadley, D'Money was airlifted to Arkansas Children's Hospital in Little Rock. Medical staff there told investigators the boy's injuries were inconsistent with the account allegedly provided by his parents.
Lewis and Wright allegedly told investigators that D'Money had "jumped or fallen from a deep freezer and that his eyes rolled back in his head," the affidavit states. Lewis allegedly claimed that after determining the child wasn't breathing, he and Wright decided to take the boy to the hospital in their car.
After D'Money's death March 8, his body was taken to Dallas for an autopsy. Among the damage documented to the child's body was a "space occupying subdural hematoma" that had caused the child's brain to "herniate down into his spine," the affidavit states. Also noted at autopsy were bruising to the child's legs and back and tissue damage in his kidneys.
Khadijah Wright has been charged with injury to a child by omission in D'Money's death and faces five to 99 years or life in prison if convicted. Her case is scheduled for trial before Miller in December.
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