LAKE HAVASU CITY – Monday’s Arizona Board of Executive Clemency hearing regarding the potential release of a Lake Havasu City man serving a natural life prison term for a brutal 1999 murder has been continued.
Deputy Mohave County attorney James Schoppmann recently learned that state authorities were operating under the understanding that Damien Lewis, 47, was serving a life prison term and would be eligible for parole after 25 years in the Arizona Department of Corrections. Schoppmann was granted his request that the April 7 clemency hearing be continued for at least 30 days in an email he fired off on Friday, April 4.
“We believe the Defendant is serving a ‘natural life’ sentence and should not be released,” Schoppmann wrote.”I attached a copy of the signed plea agreement which calls for `natural life’ as do other records in our files as a basis for this request. This is a matter that can be resolved with a little more time to ensure the action is correct.”
Lewis was just 22 years old when sentenced to natural life in prison through a plea agreement convicting him of first-degree murder in the December 15, 1999 beating death of Sandra Belding, 39. Court records indicate the pair left the Sign-In Lounge together that night and Belding’s body was found three days later in Malibu Wash, between Chaparral and San Juan Drives.
Court records reveal Lewis offered friends and police various versions of events that led to Belding’s death, including that he and she engaged in consensual sex before he killed her when she attacked him. Authorities countered that evidence suggested Lewis raped Belding before using a rock to inflict deadly blunt force trauma to her head.
“I do want to apologize for making a mistake,” Lewis said at his April 19, 2000 sentencing hearing before the now retired Mohave County Superior Court Judge Steve Conn. “There’s nothing else to say.”
It is not clear why the Board of Executive Clemency believed Lewis was approaching parole eligibility as the 25th anniversary of his imprisonment nears. Schoppmann hopes to present sufficient paperwork to cancel any consideration of clemency for Lewis.
