Accused police killer has preliminary hearing

Nine witnesses testified in Philadelphia Common Pleas Court today that John "Jordan" Lewis' committed at least five robberies that preceded the holdup that resulted in the shooting death of a police officer.

Today's court proceedings have ended for the day; the preliminary hearing will resume at 9:30 a.m. tomorrow.

Lewis, 21, was arrested Nov. 6. Officer Chuck Cassidy was shot during a robbery on Halloween at a Dunkin Donuts on Broad Street near 66th Avenue. Cassidy, 54, a married father of three, died the next day.

Friday's hearing is expected to focus on the sixth and fatal robbery that Lewis is charged with, the Oct. 31 holdup at a West Oak Lane Dunkin' Donuts.

Michael Coard, Lewis' defense lawyer, challenged a series of witnesses today as his client, wearing a gray sweatshirt marked PPS and with a shaved head, listened intently as witnesses recounted other robberies he allegedly committed.

More emotional was Shanna Lewis, who worked at another Dunkin Donuts when it was robbed Oct. 13. She resisted Coard's attempts to cast doubt on her identification of Lewis as the robber and her insistence that the robber had a firearm.

At one point, she grabbed a photograph that was taken from a surveillance tape, and said, her voicing rising, "Did you look at this picture? He has a gun!"

Members of the Cassidy family were also in attendance, lining the first four rows of a sweaty courtroom crowded with more than 100 people, about half of them officers in uniform.

Before the proceedings, which are expected to last two days, the city's new police commissioner, Chuck Ramsey, stopped to greet the widow, Judith, and the couple's three children.

In presenting the series of robbery witnesses, Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron endeavored to show a pattern of escalating violence by Lewis, who was accused of pistol-whipping a cook and firing a 9mm gun into a floor while demanding cash in a robbery before the one he accused of committing Oct. 31.

Although his client publicly confessed to Cassidy's slaying after being arrested, Coard gave no ground. He hammered witnesses, for example, on whether they were influenced by photographs they saw on TV before they made their identifications to police.

As of midafternoon, however, the lawyer had been unable to get any of the witnesses to change their stories.

During a break, Coard addressed reports about his client's confessions, including one that police said he made to them. Any confession made to police is suspect, Coard said, and, as far as the one made before TV cameras, exactly what Lewis meant may have been misunderstood, he said.

Earlier, before the testimony of a pizza shop employee, Judge Francis J. Cosgrove had two women in Muslim garb removed from the courtroom. One of them was Habib Aziz, 41, a cousin of the defendant's who had been sitting among about a dozen of his supporters.

Apparently, authorities wanted to check out a tip that a woman in Muslim garb had done something inappropriate, such as speaking to a witness before the hearing began, Aziz said during a break. She was allowed to return to the courtroom.

Earlier this week, Hakim Glover, Lewis' cousin, who was accused of helping Lewis flee to Florida after the slaying, pleaded guilty to charges of hindering apprehension and obstruction of justice. Glover could testify as a prosecution witness.

Authorities say Glover drove Lewis from Philadelphia to Wilmington on Nov. 3 and bought him a bus ticket so he could go to Florida. Lewis was arrested in Miami three days later.

Lewis confessed to the crime in front of reporters as he was being led from Miami police headquarters to a jail cell.

"I apologize to his family. I never meant anything to happen like this," he said, while exiting an elevator for the short walk to a waiting prison van.

When asked point-blank by reporters, did you confess to the killing of Officer Chuck Cassidy? Lewis responded: "Yes."