John Lewis was unlike many killers, but in prison he'll slip into a familiar pattern

MANY COP-KILLERS have rap sheets as long as that proverbial mile.

Not so in the case of John "Jordan" Lewis, a young man with the physique of Humpty Dumpty and wise-old-owl eyeglasses.

Before he began a one-man crime rampage from September through October 2007, during which he robbed six businesses and fatally shot a Philadelphia cop, Lewis had just one criminal conviction.

He got busted for possessing marijuana.

Now, Lewis, 23, is in the crime hall of infamy, having been sentenced yesterday to death for murdering Officer Chuck Cassidy during his final holdup of a West Oak Lane Dunkin' Donuts Oct. 31, 2007.

"In about a five-week period, he went from being a bumbling fool in the first robbery. . . . By the end, he was threatening people, he was pistol-whipping people, he was putting guns to the head of people and it peaked on Oct. 31," Assistant District Attorney Edward Cameron said yesterday.

Lewis, the father of a 2-year-old daughter, told the officer's widow that he got drunk the night of the murder not because he lacked remorse, but in an attempt to drown the pain.

Lewis - born to a teenage mother, and whose father was murdered when he was 5 - may have a very long wait on death row.

The state's last execution took place 10 years ago, and that only went forward because double-murderer Gary Heidnik stopped filing appeals.

Since 1976, when the U.S. Supreme Court allowed states to reinstate capital punishment, six Pennsylvania governors have signed 364 death warrants, but just Heidnik and two other men - who also stopped appealing - have been executed.

Lengthy appeals have kept the others alive.

Lewis' wait will not be comfortable. Condemned prisoners are separated from other inmates and live in administrative custody, single-inmate cells, said Department of Corrections spokeswoman Susan McNaughton.

They spend 22 hours a day in those cells, where they eat. For two hours each day they are taken from their cells to shower, exercise and to visit a mini-law library.

Each inmate can make three 15-minute calls per week and have non-contact visits only, McNaughton said.

Ultimately, Lewis will be transferred to the State Correctional Institute at Rockview, in Centre County, where all lethal injections are administered.

But long before then, he will be housed at either Graterford or Greene state prisons, McNaughton said.