Pieper Lewis got a second chance after absconding from probation three years ago. She did not get a third, and now will serve a 20-year prison sentence.
Lewis pleaded guilty in 2022 to voluntary manslaughter and willful injury for fatally stabbing Zachary Brooks in 2020. At the time, Des Moines investigators say, Lewis, now 21, was 15-year-old runaway from her adoptive home and was a victim of sex trafficking. Placed with Brook by her pimp, Lewis said she stabbed him the morning after he had raped her for at least the fifth time.
Lewis, who received an outpouring of public support, initially was granted a deferred judgment, which was revoked in 2023 after she cut off her ankle monitor and left an Iowa treatment facility. She was placed on probation again, this time at a residential center in Georgia. But in March 2024, she was removed from that facility following rule violations and vanished until December 2025, when she turned herself in to authorities in Des Moines.
At a hearing Friday, May 15, Lewis’ attorneys faulted the Georgia facility for evicting her with no friends, resources, or even identification, and they said she spent time on the streets and was sexually trafficked again before eventually making her way to Louisville, Kentucky.
There, she was able to get back on her feet with assistance from a local YMCA program, they said. They asked the court to allow her to discharge her probation and return to Louisville, where she had begun establishing a support network.
Chief Judge David Porter denied that request, revoked Lewis’ probation and handed down the sentence.
“Ms. Lewis, this chapter of your life is now closed,” he told her. “I wish you the best of luck. It gives me no pleasure to impose this sentence.”
William Morris covers courts for the Des Moines Register. He can be contacted at wrmorris2@registermedia.com or 715-573-8166.
This article originally appeared on Des Moines Register: No more second chances for Pieper Lewis as she gets 20-year sentence
Reporting by William Morris, Des Moines Register / Des Moines Register
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