My Philadelphia friends are going to be upset, but it seems that cop-killer Eric Lewis is already setting the stage for a reduced charge of third-degree murder or even manslaughter. From The Philadelphia Inquirer:

How a brief conversation on a West Philadelphia porch left one officer dead, and another seriously wounded

Eric Lewis has been charged with the murder of Officer Shane Seiber, and the attempted murder of 10 other police officers.

by Jillian Kramer, Ellie Rushing, Jesse Bunch, and Brett Sholtis | Sunday, October 11, 2026 | 10:57 AM EDT | Updated: 6:02 PM EDT

Officer Shane Seiber was knocking on the door of a West Philadelphia home around 12:50 a.m. Saturday when Eric Lewis walked up from behind, demanding to know why police were on his porch, according to a law enforcement source.

Believe it or not, the newspaper actually included Mr Lewis mugshot in their article, though I used Philly Crime Update’s tweet on the story to post his current mugshot, to avoid any copyright issues.

Seiber and his partner were responding to a neighbor’s 911 call of a person with a gun in front of a home on the 100 block of North 52nd Street, police said. As Lewis approached the officers, they asked whether he lived there, the source said — but he quickly began yelling and acting aggressively.

A brief struggle followed, and just as the officers moved to check whether Lewis was armed, the source said, he shot them.

Lewis continued to fire as they lay wounded, yelling that he told them to get off his porch, said the source, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss an ongoing investigation.

A bit further down:

Lewis, meanwhile, retreated into a dark alley behind his home — then shot at the reinforcements who would soon arrive, officials said. When he was eventually arrested after a nearly hourlong standoff, he blamed the officers for coming onto his porch, according to an arrest report obtained by The Inquirer.

“I did what I did because they did what they did,” he said, according to the report.

Then much further down, we come to this:

According to the report, Lewis said he had been across the street when he saw the officers on his porch, and he walked up to them. He shot them, he said, after the officers put their hands on him.

He also said he shot the officers because they were white, the report said. He told one officer at the hospital, a Black woman, that “if it was you that responded we would have just had a conversation,” the document said.

“They had guns, so I had every right to defend myself,” he said, according to the report.

Yeah, he’s in a heap o’ trouble, but count on the Defender Association of Philadelphia, the public defenders for the City of Brotherly Love, to try to make something of the officers attempting to see if he was armed and ‘put their hands on him.’ Chief Defender Keisha Hudson had no public comment, but it’s the job of her minions and her to get Mr Lewis off as lightly as possible. Given that Mr Lewis has already introduced race into the argument, the Defenders will use that to try to taint every potential jury pool.

My Philly friends have already been saying that Mr Lewis should face the death penalty, which can be imposed for first-degree murder in Pennsylvania. Given the testimony that Mr Lewis continued to shoot the officers after they were already down, a first-degree murder charge is possible, but the city’s George Soros-sponsored, criminal-loving and police-hating District Attorney, Larry Krasner, not only campaigned on not seeking capital punishment when he was first running in 2017, but his office reiterated that commitment in 2023.

The case should be open-and-shut: Mr Lewis has already admitted that he shot the officers. What Miss Hudson and her minions will do is seek a plea bargain, hoping for voluntary manslaughter, but perhaps conceding on third-degree murder, without a maximum sentence. Under Title 18 §2503, voluntary manslaughter is a first-degree felony, the punishment for which, under Title 18 §106(b)(2) is a prison term which can be greater than ten years, and is normally capped at twenty years. While third-degree murder is also a first-degree felony, it is frequently capped at forty years.

I, for one, will not believe justice has been done unless he is sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole. Mr Lewis has a long rap sheet, and was accused of murder again in 2020, but for some reason, was never brought to trial. He is an unrepentant criminal, and will never be safe to release into decent society.