A former member of the now-defunct Your Black Muslim Bakery in Oakland was sentenced Friday to 20 years in prison for his role in the abduction and torture of two women seven years ago, a spokeswoman for the Alameda County District Attorney’s Office said.
Richard Lewis, a 30-year-old former football star at Mission High School in San Francisco, will be back in Alameda County Superior Court on Jan. 30 for the execution of his sentence, district attorney’s spokeswoman Teresa Drenick said.
Prosecutors said the May 17, 2007, crime was a bungled attempt to get money to save the bakery from bankruptcy, as it faced a foreclosure hearing four days later.
The bakery did go bankrupt and closed its doors later that year.
Prosecutor Chris Lamiero alleged that Lewis, bakery leader Yusuf Bey IV and several other bakery associates kidnapped and tortured a mother and daughter to get them to reveal where a drug dealer they knew kept his money.
Lamiero said in his closing argument that Lewis cut the daughter with a knife and threatened her with a curling iron. Lewis testified he didn’t have anything to do with the crime and was likely at the bakery at the time it occurred.
Lewis’s trial attorney, Patrick Hetrick, told jurors that Lewis was framed by Bey’s half-brothers, Joshua Bey and Yusuf Bey V. Both pleaded guilty and received reduced sentences in exchange for their testimony.
Lewis was convicted on April 7, 2010 on charges of kidnapping, torture, and carjacking.
In February, a three-member panel of the First District Court of Appeal in San Francisco overturned Lewis’s conviction, saying the evidence against Lewis was “far from overwhelming” and jurors were allowed to hear too much “inflammatory” evidence about other crimes committed by bakery members, including the August 2007 murder of journalist Chauncey Bailey.
The appellate court agreed with Hetrick:
“There is no strong evidence of guilt (against Lewis) apart from the testimony of accomplices who benefited greatly from their participation in the prosecution’s case.”
The court sent Lewis’s case back to Alameda County Superior Court for a new trial but Lewis agreed to a plea deal with prosecutors on Aug. 26, meaning he won’t stand trial again.
The kidnapping and torture of the two women on May 17, 2007, occurred just 15 days after a San Francisco jury acquitted Lewis of murder, attempted murder and robbery charges stemming from a March 1, 2005, fatal shooting in the city’s Sunset District.
Yusuf Bey IV was convicted in 2011 of ordering the murders of Bailey and two other men in the summer of 2007 and was sentenced to life in prison without parole.
Lewis’s new attorney, William DuBois, said in August that Lewis’s plea agreement is “a fair disposition under the circumstances of the case.”
DuBois said Lewis “was an outsider to the Your Black Muslim Bakery crowd” and he had associated with its members for only a short time before the crime occurred.
He said Lewis “was taken aback by some of their antics” and didn’t have anything to do with the murders of Bailey and the two other victims in Bey’s case.
Bay City News is a 24/7 news service covering the greater Bay Area. © 2022 Bay City News, Inc. All rights reserved. Republication, rebroadcast or redistribution without the express written consent of Bay City News, Inc. is prohibited.
