Bio

Rickey Lynn Lewis was born on July 21, 1962, in Smith County, Texas. He worked as a laborer. He was 28 years old when George Ray Newman was killed on September 17, 1990. Before the murder, Lewis already had a long criminal record. His earlier convictions were mostly connected to burglary and theft. He first entered Texas prison custody on November 3, 1983, for burglary of a building in Smith County. He was sentenced to three years and was paroled on April 11, 1984, but he later returned to custody after violating parole.

Lewis continued to move in and out of prison during the 1980s. He later served time for burglary of a vehicle and another burglary of a building. On June 10, 1988, he was received by the Texas Department of Criminal Justice for a 25-year sentence in another Smith County burglary case. He was paroled from that sentence on March 19, 1990, about six months before Newman’s murder.

His mother later testified that Lewis had shot his father when he was 10 years old to protect her. The same records stated that Lewis’s father had abused him as a child. In the months before the murder, Lewis was again linked to serious crimes. In July 1990, he stole a pickup truck and fled from police before crashing it. On September 13, 1990, four days before Newman was killed, Lewis reportedly used a sawed-off shotgun during a robbery at a Tyler retail store.

By September 1990, Lewis had recently been released from prison and had returned to criminal activity. On September 17, 1990, he entered the northwest Smith County home where George Ray Newman and Connie Hilton were staying. The crime led to his capital murder conviction, years of appeals, and his execution in Texas on April 9, 2013.

Murder Story

In the early morning of September 17, 1990, George Ray Newman and his fiancée, Connie Hilton, were inside their home in a rural area of northwest Smith County, Texas. According to the case summary preserved in the uploaded source and official TDCJ records, Lewis entered the home during a burglary. Hilton later said she woke after hearing her dog barking and saw a man in the hallway with a shotgun. She screamed, and Newman responded. He was then shot in the face. The dog was also killed.

After Newman was shot, Hilton tried to hide in a bathroom. The case account states that a man pointed a gun at her and threatened to shoot her if she did not stay quiet. Hilton struggled with him and was struck in the head. She was then moved through the home while other individuals were reportedly involved in ransacking the house. The uploaded source states that Hilton was sexually assaulted, tied up in the kitchen, and left bound while Lewis and others fled in her truck.

Hilton eventually freed herself enough to seek help. The uploaded source states that she crawled to Newman and found him dead, then climbed out of a window and drove to a store to call police. TDCJ’s official summary also states that after Newman was shot, Lewis raped Newman’s fiancée, stole her vehicle, and that she later escaped through a bathroom window and drove to a store to contact authorities.

Lewis was arrested approximately three days after the murder. The uploaded case material states that he was arrested after being seen with some of the stolen property. DNA evidence also linked him to the crime. The Texas Attorney General summary included in the supplied text states that DNA analysis matched Lewis’s blood to traces found in the house and in the victim’s recovered vehicle, and also matched semen recovered from the house and from Hilton.

A Smith County grand jury indicted Lewis for capital murder in January 1991. On April 26, 1994, a Smith County jury found him guilty of capital murder for killing George Newman during the burglary of Newman’s home and the aggravated sexual assault of Connie Hilton. The TDCJ record confirms that Lewis was received on death row on May 6, 1994.

Lewis was first sentenced to death after his 1994 conviction, but the punishment phase did not end the case. The uploaded legal history states that on June 19, 1996, the Texas Court of Criminal Appeals reversed the death sentence and returned the case for a new punishment hearing. A second Smith County jury again recommended capital punishment, and on February 27, 1997, the trial court sentenced Lewis to death again. The Texas Court of Criminal Appeals later affirmed the sentence on June 23, 1999.

Lewis’s case continued through state and federal appeals for years. A scheduled 2003 execution was stayed after Lewis raised claims related to intellectual disability. The uploaded source states that he argued he was mentally impaired and therefore ineligible for execution under U.S. Supreme Court precedent. Those claims delayed the execution, but courts ultimately rejected them.

On April 9, 2013, Rickey Lynn Lewis was executed by lethal injection in Texas. The Texas Department of Criminal Justice confirms his execution date and lists his final statement. In that statement, Lewis apologized to Connie Hilton for what happened to her but continued to deny killing George Newman and robbing the house. He also claimed that two other people were still alive and responsible.