Opinion ID: 2793225
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Defendants’ Cases-in-Chief

Text: Only Lewis presented a defense. For his defense, Lewis presented two character witnesses and testified on his own behalf. He claimed that he knew defendant Rivera-Otero from the gym and occasionally gave Rivera-Otero a ride because he (Rivera-Otero) had a suspended driver’s license and no car. Lewis said that on October 26, Rivera-Otero asked him for a ride to talk to someone about a job. According to Lewis, Rivera-Otero gave him directions to the meeting, and they ended up at a gas station. Lewis testified that agent Zayas arrived at the gas station, and they followed Zayas in their car to a different location. Lewis claimed that he had no knowledge of a robbery until Zayas approached him at the second meeting spot and offered to share the thirty kilograms of stolen cocaine. Lewis said that he had never been involved with drugs before, but he decided to participate as a getaway driver because he had been laid off from work. On cross-examination, Lewis acknowledged stating at a robberyplanning meeting that the occupants of the stash house would assume that there were additional police officers outside. He also admitted to asking agent Zayas for the address of the stash house so he (Lewis) could put it into his GPS, and he admitted that he saw weapons at Boria’s house at the December 2 robbery-planning meeting. More generally, Lewis admitted that he knew the plan was to rob a house of approximately thirty kilograms of cocaine and that he was to be the getaway driver.