LAS VEGAS — Lawyers for four teens in Las Vegas who are accused of killing a high school classmate by beating them have decided to plead guilty to voluntary manslaughter. This means they will not be tried as adults, the lawyers said Thursday.
The teens were first charged as adults in January with second-degree murder and plot in the death of Jonathan Lewis Jr., 17, in November. A cell phone video of the deadly beating was shared on many social networks.
The four people were sentenced to an unknown amount of time in a juvenile detention center as part of a deal announced at a meeting before Clark County District Judge Tierra Jones on Thursday. They will be sent to juvenile court. The Las Vegas Review-Journal was the first to report on the deal.
Chief Deputy District Attorney John Giordani said that all four teens would be charged again in adult court if any of them broke the deal.
Giordani said, “The offer is conditional on everyone accepting it.”
Students were too young to be named by the Associated Press at the time of the attack on November 1, 2023.
Nine teens were arrested in connection with Lewis’s death, including these four. Lewis was harmed on November 1 near Rancho High School, where everyone was a student. Police say the students decided to fight in the alley over a vape pen and wireless headphones that were stolen from one of Lewis’ friends. Six days after getting hurt, Lewis died.
For one of the four suspects, defense lawyer Robert Draskovich called the fight that ended in death a tragedy. He also said that convicting the four students of murder as adults would have been a second tragedy.
Draskovich told The Associated Press on Thursday, “This negotiation allows my client to finish high school, move on with his life, and become a useful citizen.”
The lawyer said that he would ask for his client to be released from jail with credit for time already served at the punishment hearing. While Lewis was on the ground, Draskovich admitted that his client was one of the people who kicked him. However, he said the jury would also have seen a video showing that at least one of the people in the group with Lewis had a knife.
Lewis’s mother, Mellisa Ready, told KLAS-TV in Las Vegas on Thursday that the plea deal left her “floored.” She said that the Clark County district attorney’s office had told her that the teens were going to plead guilty to murder in adult court.
After the meeting on Thursday, Giordani wouldn’t say anything, but he did give the AP a statement from the office of Clark County District Attorney Steve Wolfson. It took into account what Lewis’ mother said and “the pain she is going through as she mourns the loss of her son.” But it said that she was told about the terms of the talks last week.
Wolfson’s office said that the case was settled after “thoughtful consideration of the egregious facts” and the possible legal problems that prosecutors would have had to deal with at trial.
The statement said that juvenile court is “best equipped to punish the defendants for their heinous conduct” and also help them change their ways.
Teenagers in Nevada who are charged with murder can be charged as adults if they were 13 or older at the time of the crime.
A homicide officer who looked into the case told a grand jury last year that surveillance video and a cellphone showed Lewis removing his red sweatshirt and punching one of the students. These details were made public in January by the courts. The suspects then threw Lewis to the ground and hit, kicked, and stomped on him, the officer said.
The records say that after the fight, a student and a local person carried Lewis back to campus while he was badly hurt and unconscious. The people at school called 911 and tried to help him.
