CROSSVILLE CHRONICLE

It was also in August 1975 that four-year-old Patrick Lewis was savagely beaten to death for getting sick at the breakfast table.

On Tuesday, Sept. 3, surviving members of Patrick's family along with members of the 13th Judicial District Attorney General's Office will travel to Morgan County Regional Prison near Wartburg for the 8:30 a.m. EDT hearing.

"It will be real interesting to see what he has to say, Renea Grant, Victim/Witness Coordinator for the district attorney's office said yesterday.

When a review of the case was held five years ago, Ms. Grant attended the hearing along with Assistant District Attorney General Ben Fann. At that time, the state parole officer told Adams, "you got your break," when his original death sentence was commuted to life in prison by the Tennessee Supreme Court in 1977. Adams, a long-distance truck driver, delivered a brutal and fatal beating on Patrick who became ill at the breakfast table in their Algood home. Present were Patrick's mother, Lovella Adams, and his two sisters, Lavonna and Susan. Later, Adams reportedly then took the body with him when he went on a trip, dumping it over a hillside in Pickett County, some 30 miles from home.

The following day the child's mother reported the boy had wandered away from his home, sparking a massive, two-day manhunt. Finally, a passerby discovered the little boy's naked body, battered about the head, and Adams was charged with murder.

During the 10-day trial, a Putnam County medical examiner testified the child suffered skull fractures, a broken jaw, brown nose, torn ear and torn lip and that "both eyeballs had been punctured." Criminal Court Judge Leon Burns presided over the trial.

His mother was charged with aiding and abetting and testified against James Adams during the trial. She said Adams was jealous of the young child.

Lovella Adams admitted walking out of the room when the beating took place, and later wrapping the body up so that James Adams could dispose of it. She pleaded guilty to the aiding charge and was sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served a portion of that sentence.

Adams was convicted in 1976 and has been in prison since. The jury sentenced him to die in the electric chair but the Supreme Court decision struck down that sentence, along with the sentences of 34 other inmates on death row.

Assistant District Attorney General Lillie Ann Sells, Ms. Grant, Lavonna LaPointe, sister of the young victim, and Laken Mitchell, a former prosecutor, all plan on attending the hearing.

Both sides of the Adams family have relatives in Cumberland County and the family lived in Cumberland County for several years before moving to Algood. Adams, now 57, is housed in the Morgan County Regional Correction Facility.