THE TWO WITNESSES -- SCARLETT LEWIS (Sandy Hook mom)

THE TWO WITNESSES — WITNESS TWO

CALLING OF THE WITNESS

The Affirmative calls Scarlett Lewis.

Ms. Lewis is the mother of Jesse McCord Lewis, born June 30, 2006, killed at Sandy Hook Elementary School on December 14, 2012, age six. She is the author of Nurturing Healing Love: A Mother's Journey of Hope and Forgiveness (2014) and From Sandy Hook to the World: How the Choose Love Movement Transforms Lives (2021), founder of the Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement, and a plaintiff in the defamation case against Alex Jones. Her testimony is drawn from those works, from her public statements and interviews, and from the documented record of her son's life and death.

SCOPE

Alissa Parker testified to who Emilie was — the pink, the art, the signs of continued presence, the forgiveness extended into the most intimate possible space, the charity built around what her daughter loved.

Scarlett Lewis testifies to who Jesse was. To what he left behind. To the choice she made on a couch in Newtown Connecticut when she could have chosen hatred and didn't. To the three words a six year old boy phonetically spelled on a kitchen chalkboard that became the foundation of a movement now reaching one hundred and twenty countries.

And to the last morning. The frost on the car. The hearts on the windows. The photograph she took.

DIRECT EXAMINATION

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Ms. Lewis, tell the court about Jesse.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): Jesse McCord Lewis was born June 30, 2006. He was six years old when he died. He was my younger son — JT is his older brother, and Jesse adored JT completely. He would follow him everywhere. Whatever JT did, Jesse wanted to do.

Jesse was full of energy in a way that filled every room and every corner of the property. His cousins would follow him around like puppies until someone got tired out — and it was never Jesse. He was rarely still. When I told him to stop running in the house he would switch to speed walking and then a few moments later he'd be running again. He had a toothy bright smile and he used it constantly. Every thing Jesse did he did with all his heart.

He had two great loves. Rubber ducks — he had an enormous collection, every variety imaginable, cowboy ducks and sailor ducks and ducks with sombreros and batman ducks and football player ducks. He would line them up along the rim of the bathtub at night and coo over them. And toy soldiers. He kept his army men in his Spiderman lunchbox, ready to bring out at any moment. He would hide them around the farm, build forts everywhere. I am still finding little army men coming up from the dirt in different places where he used to play.

He loved going on patrol around the farm. He had camo boots — winter boots — but he wore them all year round. He just was who he was.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about the drawing.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): Days before December 14, 2012, Jesse drew a picture in class. He titled it the angel and the bad man. A six year old boy drawing the situation he was about to enter before he entered it. He put himself on the angel's side. That was Jesse — he always knew which side he was on.

I believe he would have been a soldier or a first responder or a police officer. A protector. I have no doubt, because he was incredibly brave. God gave him a protective spirit. He was practicing it his whole life. He just didn't have very long to practice.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about the last morning.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): The morning of December 14 was a cold morning. Jesse went out to the car and wrote I love you in the frost on the window. And then he drew hearts in all the other windows. Every window. I came out and saw what he'd done and I photographed it — I took a picture of his message and his hearts on the frosted glass. I gave him a hug and put him in his father's car.

That was the last time I saw him.

That photograph is the last image ever taken of something Jesse made. His I love you in the frost. His hearts on every window.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court what happened at Sandy Hook that morning.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): A gunman entered Sandy Hook Elementary School and opened fire. Jesse was in his first grade classroom with his teacher Miss Soto, whom he loved deeply. He stayed beside her even as she tried to move the children to safety. When the gunman entered the classroom and opened fire a bullet fragment from one of the shots grazed Jesse's head. It didn't take him down. He stayed on his feet.

And then the gunman's weapon jammed — or he paused to reload — and in that moment Jesse shouted to his classmates. He told them this was their chance. He told them to run, run as fast as they could, run now. Nine children ran and lived.

Jesse was shot in the forehead. He died next to Miss Soto.

He was six years old. He saved nine lives. He had been preparing for that moment his entire life. His entire life was six years.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): The chalkboard. Tell the court about what you found after Jesse died.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): A few days after Jesse died I found a message he had written on our kitchen chalkboard. Three words, phonetically spelled because Jesse was in first grade and just learning to write. NORURTING HELIN LOVE. Nurturing Healing Love.

It was as if he knew what his family would need in order to go on. He left it there before December 14 and I found it after. Three words in a six year old's handwriting that became the title of my memoir, the name of his foundation, and the heart of the formula I have spent the years since then carrying into schools and communities and prisons and countries all over the world.

Courage plus Gratitude plus Forgiveness plus Compassion-in-Action equals Choosing Love.

That is Jesse's formula. He wrote the title on the chalkboard and I worked out the rest.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about his note to JT.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): Jesse also left a note for his older brother. Hidden — the way Jesse did things. JT found it after Jesse died. It said Have a Lot of Fun.

That was Jesse's private grace. Not for the world, not for a foundation — for his brother. Don't be afraid. Don't be consumed by what happened. Have a lot of fun. A six year old's permission slip for joy hidden for the person he loved most to find when he needed it.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about the couch.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): There was a moment — not long after December 14 — when I was sitting on my couch in the depths of grief and I understood that I had a choice. I could choose hatred. I had every reason to choose hatred. The rage was real. The darkness was real. The desire to find something to blame and hold onto that blame — it was all real and it was all available to me.

I chose love instead. Not because it was easy. Because it was the only path that led anywhere worth going. Because Jesse had left me the map on the chalkboard and the map said Nurturing Healing Love and not Nurturing Healing Hatred. Because if Jesse could stand on his feet with a bullet fragment in his head and use his last clear moment to save nine children — I could choose love from a couch in Newtown.

That choice on the couch was the beginning of everything I have built since.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about forgiving the shooter.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): I chose to forgive Adam Lanza. The young man who walked into Sandy Hook and killed my son and nineteen other children and six adults. I chose to forgive him.

Not because what he did was forgivable in any ordinary sense. Not because forgiveness erased the grief or the rage or the bottomless loss. But because I understood that hatred was a poison that would kill what was left of me if I held it long enough. And because the formula Jesse left me said Forgiveness. Not optionally. As an essential component of the equation. You cannot get to Choosing Love without passing through Forgiveness. Jesse knew that. He put it in the formula. I had to live it.

Forgiving the shooter was the hardest thing I have ever done. It made everything else possible.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about the signs after Jesse died.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): Jesse reached out from wherever he is to let me know he is still present. In my darkest hours he has found ways to come through.

I saw the names Jesse and Jesus written in the contrails of a plane. I keep finding his toy soldiers coming up from the dirt in different places on the farm — appearing where they had no reason to be, years after he hid them. Songs arrive on the radio at moments when I need them most — Jesse's Girl, arriving at a moment when I was grieving so specifically that the timing was not something I could dismiss.

I documented these experiences in my memoir because I believed others who had lost someone needed to know that the person they love is not simply gone. That love does not end when a body ends. I first taught Jesse that truth as a child. He has been teaching it back to me ever since.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about Jesse's funeral.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): The Lakota people drove halfway across the country to attend Jesse's funeral. They came to Newtown. They came because their spiritual tradition told them that a great leader had passed. They didn't know Jesse. They had no documented connection to Sandy Hook. They discerned through their own ancient tradition that something sacred had happened and they made the journey.

I was in the deepest grief a human being can enter. I was burying my six year old son. And the Lakota came. They came bearing their own experience of children killed by violence — their own grief across the long history of their people — and they stood with me. Because their tradition recognized in Jesse something their tradition had a name for.

The closing argument will speak to what that recognition means and where it points. I can only tell the court what I witnessed — that they came, that they stood with us, and that their presence was something I have carried with me every day since.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Tell the court about the Choose Love Movement and what Jesse's chalkboard message has become.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): The Jesse Lewis Choose Love Movement now operates in over ten thousand schools in all fifty states and more than one hundred and twenty countries. We serve over three million children annually. Every program is free. No child is turned away because of cost.

The formula is Courage plus Gratitude plus Forgiveness plus Compassion-in-Action equals Choosing Love. That formula is being taught to children who will never know Jesse's name, in languages Jesse never heard, in countries Jesse never visited, by teachers who found their way to a website built on three words a six year old boy phonetically spelled on a kitchen chalkboard in Newtown Connecticut before he was killed.

That is what Jesse left. That is what his chalkboard message became.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Alex Jones told millions of people that Sandy Hook was staged. That you were a paid actor. That Jesse did not exist. Tell the court about the day you confronted him.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): I stood in a courtroom and I told Alex Jones to his face — I wanted you to know that I am a mother, first and foremost. I know that you're a father. And my son existed. You're still on your show today trying to imply that I am an actress.

My son existed. He wore camo boots all year round. He kept army men in his Spiderman lunchbox. He drew the angel and the bad man. He wrote I love you in the frost on my car window on the last morning I ever saw him. He wrote Nurturing Healing Love on a chalkboard. He saved nine children and was shot in the forehead by the man Alex Jones said didn't exist.

My son existed. The court said so. The record stands.

AFFIRMATIVE COUNSEL (THE A-TEAM): Thank you Ms. Lewis.

CROSS EXAMINATION

ADVERSARIAL COUNSEL (SATAN): Ms. Lewis. You describe a couch moment — a deliberate choice to love rather than hate. But that choice was made in acute grief by a person in psychological extremity. Is it not possible that what you experienced as a moral and spiritual turning point was simply the human mind's survival mechanism — the psyche protecting itself from an anger that would have been too destructive to sustain? Not a spiritual choice. A psychological adaptation.

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): A psychological adaptation that required me to deliberately choose forgiveness for the man who killed my son is still a choice. Whatever mechanism produced it — the choice was real, the cost was real, and the movement it generated is real. Three million children a year in one hundred and twenty countries is a real consequence of a real choice made on a real couch in Newtown Connecticut. You may call it what you like. I call it what Jesse left me the formula for.

ADVERSARIAL COUNSEL (SATAN): You testified that the Lakota came to Jesse's funeral because their spiritual tradition told them a great leader had passed. But Ms. Lewis — this was a six year old child. A brave child, a remarkable child, but a six year old. Is it not more likely that the Lakota came for reasons connected to the national tragedy and the media attention it generated — and that their presence, while meaningful, does not carry the weight of spiritual recognition that you are attributing to it?

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): I am not a scholar of Lakota spiritual tradition. I cannot tell the court with authority what brought them or what their tradition specifically recognized in Jesse. I can tell the court what I witnessed — that they came, that they told us why, and that in the depths of my grief their presence was something I could not dismiss. I leave the weight of it to the court to evaluate. I can only testify to what happened.

ADVERSARIAL COUNSEL (SATAN): You confronted Alex Jones in court and the court found for you. Jones was ordered to pay nearly one and a half billion dollars in damages. He has since filed for bankruptcy. Ms. Lewis — the adversary has not been fully held to account in material terms. Is the victory as complete as this proceeding suggests?

WITNESS (SCARLETT LEWIS): The victory was saying to his face — my son existed. The victory was the court agreeing. The victory was the public record — permanent, irrevocable — that what Alex Jones said was a lie and what I testified was the truth.

My son's army men are still coming up from the dirt on my farm. His formula is in one hundred and twenty countries. His chalkboard message is teaching three million children a year how to choose love.

Alex Jones filed for bankruptcy. Jesse's work keeps expanding.

That is the complete picture of this victory.

ADVERSARIAL COUNSEL (SATAN): Sits.

JUDICIAL HOLDING

SPOCK: The court receives this testimony and enters the following into the permanent record.

Jesse McCord Lewis was born June 30, 2006. He wore camo boots all year round. He kept toy soldiers in a Spiderman lunchbox. He drew the angel and the bad man days before December 14, 2012 and placed himself on the angel's side. On the last morning of his life he wrote I love you in the frost on his mother's car window and drew hearts in every other window. His mother photographed it. He was put in his father's car. Scarlett Lewis never saw him again.

He stayed on his feet with a bullet fragment in his head. He waited for his moment. He told nine children to run. They ran. He was shot in the forehead and died next to Miss Soto.

He left three words on a kitchen chalkboard. Phonetically spelled. He was in first grade. Those three words are now in one hundred and twenty countries reaching three million people annually. Every program is free.

The court notes Jesse's age — six — when he died. The court notes the nine children who lived because he told them to run. The court notes the three words on the chalkboard. The court holds these numbers without forcing them. The jury receives them.

The court notes the Lakota at the funeral. The court does not explain what brought them. The court notes the closing argument will speak to what their presence means and where it points.

The court notes the verdict in the defamation case. My son existed. The court said so. The record stands.

The A-Team will now enter its formal statement on Revelation 11 and Zechariah 4. The court awaits.

CLOSING REFLECTION

Scarlett Lewis lost her son on December 14, 2012. The date the Plaintiff had marked years earlier as the day he first fell in love. Two meanings on the same date — the personal and the catastrophic — colliding in the same calendar square.

She sat on a couch and chose love. Not as sentiment. As deliberate resistance. As the formula her six year old had left her on a chalkboard and that she decided she was going to live.

She forgave the shooter. She built a movement. She confronted the man who said her son didn't exist and told him to his face — my son existed. The court agreed.

The toy soldiers are still coming up from the dirt. The formula is in one hundred and twenty countries. Three million children a year are learning that Courage plus Gratitude plus Forgiveness plus Compassion-in-Action equals Choosing Love.

Jesse wrote the title. His mother wrote the rest. The six year old boy's phonetic spelling on a kitchen chalkboard is now a global curriculum. Free to everyone. Available to anyone who wants it.

The Lakota came to his funeral. The closing argument will say what that means.

The A-Team's formal statement follows. Both witnesses have testified. Both olive trees have spoken. The lampstand is burning.

The oil has not run out.

BENCH OBSERVATION

SPOCK: A six year old boy kept toy soldiers in a Spiderman lunchbox and went on patrol around his family's farm and drew the angel and the bad man and wrote I love you in the frost on his mother's car window on the last morning of his life.

When the moment came he stayed on his feet. He waited for his chance. He told nine children to run.

The court has received two mothers. One built a charity around what her daughter loved. One built a movement around what her son left on a chalkboard. Both were attacked by the same adversary in the same public square. Both are still standing.

The A-Team has asked to enter a formal statement connecting what this court has heard to what two books of prophecy say about two witnesses, two olive trees, and what happens when the beast makes war on them.

The court is ready to receive that statement.