A former guard at the Indiana County Jail was sentenced yesterday to serve two years in prison followed by 18 months of supervised release for smuggling contraband cell phones into the jail for used by federal inmates housed there.
In federal court in Pittsburgh, U.S. District Judge Cathy Bisson rejected 26-year-old Alex Lewis’s request for probation only, saying “If the people we place in trusted positions cannot be trusted, the entire system breaks down.”
Lewis, who is formerly from Home and now is listed as being a former resident of McDonough, Georgia, pleaded guilty in July to bribery of a public official and conspiracy between June and August of 2019. He admitted accepting multiple bribes from federal detainee Rashon Richardson to meet with an intermediary outside the jail who paid Lewis the money. On one occasion, $400 was paid directly into Lewis’s PayPal account.
Lewis and Richardson were both indicted in November of last year. Richardson has pleaded not guilty and his case is still pending before Judge Bisson.
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