Fraught Testimony About Threats to Judge

BROOKLYN, N.Y. (CN) - The allegedly bipolar woman accused of criminal threatening "bragged about going down in history for killing a judge," prosecutors said Tuesday.

Regina Lewis faces felony charges for what she allegedly said in a July 10, 2012, call to the chambers of U.S. District Judge Lewis Kaplan after he dismissed a lawsuit she had filed.

"I have a fucking bullet with his name on it," Lewis said, as recounted on the stand by Kaplan's clerk, Elizabeth Menard.

When seven or eight U.S. Marshals arrested Lewis at her apartment on July 26, they found her hiding between a couch and a wall, one of those officers testified Tuesday. U.S. District Judge Brian Cogan is presiding over Lewis' bench trial.

Menard said Lewis called Kaplan "white trash" before hanging up.

Defense attorney William Epstein, who has been working with Lewis since a previous outburst in court, called his client bipolar.

She is "all bark and no bite," a "flea with a very foul mouth," Epstein said.

Lewis, wearing blue prison scrubs, grabbed the microphone and told Cogan that "never to my knowledge have I ever threatened a judge."

"This is the first time I'm being accused of such a thing," she added.

Epstein took back floor to note that such heckling is "annoying, it's abusive, but she never really intended to make these statements."

U.S. Attorney Anthony DePhillipis insisted that Lewis "bragged about going down in history for killing a judge."

Vicky Noriega, a clerk with the Southern District of New York's pro se office, testified that she has known of Lewis for years because of the pro se lawsuits she's filed, including one against Lewis' own sister.

On the day Lewis allegedly threatened Kaplan, Noriega said Lewis called "irate, upset, angry."

Lewis had said, Noriega testified: "This motherfucking judge, I'm going to kill him."

"I felt threatened and scared for the judge," Noriega added.

She said Lewis then called her a "Puerto Rican motherfucker."

"Miss Lewis has a temper," she said.

Epstein, the defense attorney, said Lewis considers herself "an activist" prone to "vulgar rants" as a "slighted black woman."

Having bipolar disorder means her mind is "flooded with 20 different ideas," Epstein said. "Nothing is planned, nothing is intended."

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