Subscribe nowCustomer Service

Register Now

• Sign In
• E-mail preferences

MiddletownJournal.com

Attorney agrees to testify in Erica Baker case

By Rob Modic

Cox News Service

DAYTON | A former public defender has agreed to testify about what a former client may have told her about the 1999 disappearance of 9-year-old Erica Baker.

In announcing what ends a 3 1/2-year legal dispute, Montgomery County Prosecutor Mathias H. Heck Jr. said Beth Lewis' lawyers contacted him before noon Tuesday and said she was prepared to testify before a grand jury.

"She will appear before the grand jury on a date we will select" within 30 days, Heck said. He said he will not announce the date. Grand jury proceedings are not public.

Lewis' attorneys acted hours after a federal appeals court Tuesday rejected her bid to avoid testifying.

The 6th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that federal courts have no jurisdiction in the matter and sent the case back to state courts, which have consistently ruled that Lewis must testify in the case of Baker, who vanished while walking her dog near her home in Kettering in 1999. The girl's body has never been found, but authorities believe she's dead.

The federal appeals court opinion, written by Judge R. Guy Cole Jr., said Lewis "chose to wait to bring her federal defenses until she saw how her state law defenses fared. ...

"Having had her day in court, Lewis seeks to profit from outrunning her first state court contempt order by raising federal arguments she failed to raise when she had the chance."

Since June 2002, Lewis had staved off prosecutors' efforts to take her before a grand jury or jail her for contempt.

Before her defeat in the 6th Circuit, Lewis had been rebuffed at three levels in state court and, most recently in April, by a federal district judge.

She failed to persuade a single judge that she should not be forced to disclose what deceased former client Jan Franks may have told her in confidence about the missing girl.

A friend of Franks, Christian Gabriel, was convicted Oct. 7 of felonies connected with moving and concealing the girl's body — she is presumed dead — and got the maximum six years in prison. Gabriel told police that he and Jan Franks were in a van that hit and killed the girl. No one has been charged in the girl's death.

Lewis represented Franks in an unrelated drug case before Franks died of a drug overdose Dec. 30, 2001. During that period, Lewis intervened when investigators sought to question Franks about Erica Baker.

Under Ohio law, a surviving spouse can waive a deceased spouse's attorney-client privilege, and prosecutors secured a waiver from Shane Franks. This case is the first time the law has been applied in a criminal matter.