Ms. Lewis-Grant showed no emotion as Judge Philip Zeigler read the verdict.
The jury will reconvene today at 9 a.m. to determine how long her sentence will be. Murder is a first-degree felony with a punishment range of five to 99 years or life in prison. Tampering with physical evidence is a third-degree felony punishable by up to 10 years in prison.
The jury considered capital murder, which carries an automatic sentence of life in prison without parole, but ultimately settled on the lesser charge. It took more than 4 1/2 hours of deliberation to come to a verdict.
The jury’s decision basically came down to two testimonies: John Hopkins, a two-time felon who testified in jail attire, and Ms. Lewis-Grant, a mother of two with a habit of disparaging her ex-husband in public and being vocal about wanting him dead.
The findings of the jury are an indication that it felt Hopkins, who pleaded guilty to capital murder last month, had a more credible testimony than Ms. Lewis-Grant.
When Ms. Lewis-Grant was on the stand she refuted every major point of evidence offered by Hopkins. She said she never asked Hopkins to kill her former husband and did not burn the bloody clothes of Hopkins and her 16-year-old son after the slaying.
Jamie Grant pleaded guilty to murder in September and received a 45-year sentence.
“Johnny was a liar, a thief, a murderer,” said defense attorney Russ Hunt Sr. during closing arguments. “It’s important because the state’s entire case rests on Johnny Hopkins. He makes my skin crawl. I think he ought to make your skin crawl and the state has built its entire case off him.
“He’s trying to put one over on you folks. He is trying to use the system to put Megan away for life. Is he the kind of person you want to base your decision on if it means Megan spends the rest of her life in prison?”
Co-workers, family members and members of the community all testified about Ms. Lewis-Grant’s vindictiveness toward her ex-husband. One friend even testified the Ms. Lewis-Grant told her before she was arrested that her son was in on the crime.
Ms. Lewis-Grant denied it all, saying she was only guilty of hating a man and speaking about it to others.
Hunt compared the events leading up to the murder to the events that have caused America’s economy to “go into the tank.” He said a host of factors combined together to create a “perfect storm” that led to Grant’s death.
Nobody disputed that the so-called perfect storm resulted in a disaster, but District Attorney David Castillo made sure to place blame for the storm squarely on the shoulders of Ms. Lewis-Grant.
“A perfect storm takes elements and facts,” he said. “It happened because all these things are true and come together to show one thing and one thing alone and that’s that Leslie Megan Lewis-Grant was a participant in this murder.”
In his closing argument, Castillo spoke about the day before Grant was murdered. He had taken measures to prevent his daughter’s maternal grandmother from eating lunch with her at school. The grandmother had been defying a court order by making daily visits to the school, according to testimony in the trial.
Hopkins said he decided to kill Grant that morning when Grant made Ms. Lewis-Grant cry during a phone call between the two.
“The bottom line is Hopkins said the couple talked about it and he did it,” Castillo said about the killing. “She cried at the funeral just like she cried on the stand … it turned on and off pretty quickly.”
Even though Hopkins was the key witness for the state, it didn’t stop Castillo from disparaging him before handing the charges over to the jury.
“John Hopkins is a coward,” he said. “He stabbed Michael Grant while he was asleep. The defendant is a coward too, making allegations against him when he is not here to defend himself.”
Castillo said the allegations of abuse and stalking that Ms. Lewis-Grant made against her ex-husband were unfounded. He also criticized her for her two live-in relationships with ex-felons.
Ms. Lewis-Grant said her children were the most important thing in her life and that she would do anything to protect and nurture them, yet she moved ex-felons in with her as protection from Grant.
“Everything she has said has been contradictory to what she has done,” Castillo said.
