No-case submission thrown out in Lewis case
Published:Friday | June 10, 2011 | 12:00 AM
Sheena Gayle, Gleaner Writer
WESTERN BUREAU:
Embattled international Pastor Dr Paul Lewis received a huge blow in his carnal-abuse trial yesterday when Justice Leighton Pusey threw out the no-case submission filed on Wednesday.
A no-case submission was filed in the Westmoreland Circuit Court under the premise that there were several inconsistencies in the evidence submitted by the Crown.
This means that Lewis' lawyer, Keith Bishop, will have to present a case to the seven-member jury which will now decide the fate of the disgraced reverend.
charges against pastor
The United States-based pastor, who was born in Jamaica, has a massive following both locally and overseas through his Messengers For Christ Ministries World Healing Center. He will also have to answer charges of perversion of justice today, as it relates to the carnal-abuse offence, in the Savanna-la-Mar Resident Magistrate's Court.
"We are concerned about the situation. His church misses him badly and we are just fasting and praying that he will be delivered from this trial," the defendant's mother, Pastor Victoria Lewis, told The Gleaner by telephone.
She oversees the worldwide prayer line for The Messengers For Christ Ministries and most of the church operations in her son's absence.
The Crown alleges that in June 2009, Dr Lewis met a 15-year-old girl at a church convention in Little London, Westmoreland, where he was a guest preacher.
He reportedly exchanged telephone numbers with the girl and, in a subsequent meeting, took her and a 14-year-old female companion with him on a trip to Clarendon.
On their return to Westmoreland, the girls spent the night with him at his Negril hotel. There was a subsequent police investigation and the clergyman was charged with carnal abuse.