The military veteran who directed gunshots at police and a family member in a Christmas Day 2018 standoff at his East Vincent home has fired his attorney and declared that he will represent himself at any future retrial on the case he was convicted of, but whose guilty verdict was subsequently overturned on appeal.
On Wednesday, Nathaniel Lewis appeared before Common Pleas Court Judge Alita Rovito and said that he no longer wanted his current attorney, Michael Diamondstein of Philadelphia, to handle his case. Instead, he asked Rovito to appoint stand-by counsel so that he could act as his own attorney, but have needed legal advice available at trial.
Lewis, 40, who remains in Chester County Prison on $1.5 million bail, also asked Rovito to release him on unsecured bail so he could enroll in a program at the Coatesville Veterans Affairs Medical Center for soldiers who experience post-traumatic stress.
Rovito said she would not entertain any motions for bail at the brief hearing Wednesday, but that she would revisit the matter when Lewis’ case is called for trial on July 29. But she indicated that she did not believe the case would be ready to be heard by a jury then, even if Lewis is accepted by the Chester County Public Defender’s Office, which would likely provide the stand-by counsel if Rovito gives her approval.
Chief Deputy District Attorney Michelle Frei, who tried the case against Lewis in 2021, said she would emphatically oppose any motion for nominal bail, which would allow Lewis to gain his freedom after what he said was more than 2,000 days behind bars.
“He is a danger to the community,” she said after the hearing.
Asked why his client had decided to fire him, Diamondstein said outside the courtroom that he could not comment because of attorney-client privilege. Lewis did not offer any explanation during the hearing but had written to Rovito last month to make allegations about his representation.
Lewis’ case has been in and out of the courtroom since the cold December night during which he sat in the second-floor bedroom of his home on an East Vincent circular street off Seven Stars Road and fired dozens of shots at a police emergency team that had been called to the home after he barricaded himself inside. Earlier, he had fired shots at his sister-in-law as she came to check on him after he failed to attend a family Christmas party.
No one was injured. Lewis eventually surrendered after an emergency squad negotiator fulfilled his request and sang “White Christmas” to him.
The jury found him guilty of trying to kill a member of the Chester County Emergency Response Team who had been deployed to his home during the incident. The jurors also found Lewis, a former Army National Guard officer who served in Iraq, guilty of aggravated assault for shooting at the officers, as well as at his sister-in-law,
But the panel acquitted Lewis of several counts of attempted first-degree murder involving the majority of the Chester County Emergency Response Team he shot at outside his home, and for firing his AR-15 at his sister-in-law as she opened the door to his second-floor bedroom. Rovito, who had inherited the case from another judge, sentenced him to 28 1/2 to 57 years in state prison.
His conviction was overturned when a state Superior Court judge ruled that the judge who oversaw his 2021 trial, Jaqueline Carroll Cody, had improperly removed his original attorney after allegations of professional misconduct were leveled against her by the prosecution. Cody could have sought other measures to guard against further misbehavior other than not permitting her to represent Lewis at trial, the court said.
The judge wrote in his March 2023 opinion overturning the conviction that the attorney, Lauren Wimmer of Philadelphia, had “engaged in conduct that offended the trial court’s expectations of the ethical and vigorous advocacy required from a member of the Bar of Pennsylvania.” But he ruled that “the record does not support the trial court’s conclusion that disqualification of Attorney Wimmer was necessary to protect the Commonwealth’s fair trial rights.
He was represented at trial by Paul Lang of Bensalem.
Diamondstein told Rovito that he had not been hired by Lewis himself, but by Lewis’ mother, who had attended the 2021 trial on a daily basis. The attorney said, however, that his mother had specifically told him at the time that the family would not be paying for any further private counsel.
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