Teen Who Killed Her Alleged Rapist — and Ran — Could Now Face Jail

Pieper Lewis, the Iowa teen who killed her alleged rapist, will face a judge on Friday for the first time since escaping from the women’s shelter where she was serving a probation sentence. Lewis was sentenced to probation in a deferred judgment after pleading drown from murder to manslaughter. She had the opportunity to clear her criminal record upon the successful completion of her probation term, but her flight from the residential facility where she’d been staying has thrown her future into doubt. The case has drawn national attention as an example of how the justice system prosecutes juveniles, especially those who have been victims of sex trafficking. There’s still a possibility that Lewis could complete her probation and have her charges cleared from her record, but she might also face years in prison — it all depends on a judge’s decision. “The entire case is deeply sad and deeply troubling and deeply complicated, all at the same time,” says Emily Hughes, a former Iowa State Public Defender and a professor at the University of Iowa College of Law. 

Lewis was 15 in June 2020, when she stabbed to death Zachary Brooks, 37, who she said had raped her after she was trafficked to him for sex. Earlier in 2020, Lewis had run away from her mother, who she described as abusive. She spent time sleeping on the steps of an apartment building, before being taken in by a 28-year-old musician, who Lewis claimed forced her to have sex with other men, including Brooks, for money. That man has not been prosecuted, and the Des Moines Police Department did not respond to a request for comment on the investigation into Lewis’ allegations against him. According to reporting by the Des Moines Register, court filings showed Lewis said Brooks had forced her to smoke marijuana and drink to the point of passing out on multiple occasions when she’d been trafficked to him. On June 1, 2020, she said, she awoke to Brooks raping her and screamed for him to stop. Later, while he slept, she took a knife from the nightstand and stabbed him 30 times.

Although Lewis was initially charged as an adult with first-degree murder, she pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and willful injury. While each count is punishable with up to 10 years in prison, in September, Polk County Judge David M. Porter gave her a deferred sentence. The agreement was if Lewis successfully completed her probation, the charges would be expunged from her record. At the sentencing, the judge encouraged her to tell her story to other young women in the community.

Members of Lewis’ community further rallied behind her. Her former math teacher, Leland Schipper, started a GoFundMe for her to help pay the $150,000 she was ordered to pay in restitution to Brooks’ family. The campaign raised more than $560,000. While the funds are currently frozen, this is only because the campaign is moving through a standard verification process to ensure the funds are properly applied, a spokesperson for GoFundMe tells Rolling Stone. Lewis, now 18, also finished high school while she was in custody. 

On Nov. 4, however, Lewis left the Fresh Start Women’s Center in the early morning and cut off her ankle monitor, prompting a five-day search. She was found in Des Moines on Nov. 9 and charged with a misdemeanor for her escape. Her motive for fleeing has not been revealed, but the public quickly realized her freedom was at stake. “I haven’t seen any reports about what happened, and why she cut off her electronic monitoring device,” Hughes says. “But I think the circumstances of it are going to be really important.”

Although Schipper, Lewis’ former teacher, did not respond to a request for an interview, he posted on Facebook after Lewis’ escape, asking people not to jump to conclusions about the choices of a teenager who has experienced trauma. “People who have grown up surrounded by deeply traumatic experiences often make decisions that make little sense to those who care about them,” Schipper wrote. “Their brain development is permanently altered by the chemical reactions to the stress and trauma they endured. Their triggers are difficult to understand, predict, or prevent.” He asked people to pray “that she will be treated fairly by a system that inflicted years of additional trauma on a young girl who had already experienced so much.”

At the Friday hearing, Judge Porter will consider input from Lewis’ lawyers and the authorities. While Lewis was missing, the probation department asked in a report for her deferred judgment to be revoked and her original sentence to be imposed. It’s tough to know exactly what that means, since the judge has technically applied no sentence beyond the probation, opting instead to defer his final decision. A representative of the Polk County Prosecutor’s office declined to comment on whether they would request a specific sentence for Lewis, and Lewis’ lawyer did not respond to a request for comment.

Ultimately, Lewis’ future is up to the judge. According to Hughes, the judge will weigh several factors when it comes to Lewis’ sentence, not the least of which is her age at the time of the crime. “You have her being a victim of sex trafficking,” she says. “You also have her being the person who killed somebody, and then in addition to that, you have all the science that we know about people who suffer from abuse, and then you have her age on top of it. It’s sort of a perfect storm.”

According to Hughes, things could go one of several ways for Lewis: The judge might do nothing, allowing her to go back to serving probation, with the chance to have her record expunged when she finishes the sentence. In the most extreme case, the judge could send her to jail for the manslaughter and willful injury charges, and there’s concern she could get a decade, or even two. There’s also an option in the middle, according to Hughes. She could remain on probation but with a suspended sentence, which is very different than her current setup. “One of the big benefits of the deferred judgment was, if she successfully completed that, it could get expunged from our record, versus if she is basically convicted with a suspended sentence and on probation, that is now part of her record,” Hughes says. “And so that still changes life forever forward.” The judge could also sentence her for the new misdemeanor charge. In any sort of non-jail situation, Hughes says Lewis will continue to be expected to adhere to rules, and she might not get more chances to make mistakes. “There will be terms that she has to comply with,” Hughes says.” And if she doesn’t comply with those terms, then we’ll be right back to another revocation hearing.”

Hughes says Judge Porter will weigh factors including the circumstances under which Lewis left the facility, and how well she was doing before then. (She has had a few minor probation violations in custody, but nothing as serious as this.) He will also need to consider her age now and at the time of the crime. Hughes says getting to continue her deferred judgment would be an “amazing” result: “It’s believing in the potential of people, and especially the potential of kids who are so young when they commit a crime, and in this case, a person who was herself a victim of sex-trafficking and abuse at the same time.”