, Fla. — Two times, Sandra Lewis sat in a conference room to answer questions about her involvement with now-suspended Orlando Commissioner Regina Hill.
Two times, in April and May of this year, Hill’s attorneys quickly grew frustrated about her inability to remember details about her past or outright unwillingness to provide information they said was necessary to give Hill a fair trial. The written recordings of the depositions show why Hill’s attorneys are now asking that Lewis be removed from the case for obstruction as they build their potential defense that Hill was enveloped in a political conspiracy.
The defense was helped when Lewis positively answered that she assisted the campaigns of Andrew Bain, the prosecutor who charged Hill and Shan Rose, the woman who took Hill’s position on the City Commission, even after Hill was charged.
A controversial stamp
Hill’s legal troubles date back to the spring of 2024, when she was arrested on accusations she exploited a 96-year-old constituent.
Prosecutors said Hill falsified documents to gain power of attorney over the woman and then used the power to spend $100,000 of the woman’s money on items like a facelift, hotels and IV treatments.
Lewis’s notary stamp appeared on that document. In an interview with WFTV the day after the allegations against Hill became public, she pointed to misspelled names, mismatched dates, and an unusual gap in a signature line.
She said none of those things would’ve passed her standards for signing off on the document and stamping it. “As far as I’m concerned, you have my signature and my stamp, but you do not have my step that I use to authenticate documents,” Lewis said at the time, claiming that the document was altered.
Lewis was expected to provide that testimony in court, which would have allowed prosecutors to claim that Hill had no legal right to the woman’s money. However, Hill’s attorneys have seized on Lewis as their potential break in the trial as well. Documents obtained from the City of Orlando show Lewis began working in Commissioner Rose’s office last July on a temporary, $17-per-hour basis – months after Hill’s suspension and Rose’s ascension to the seat.
Financial disclosures from the State of Florida also show Bain’s PAC paid Lewis $41,000 amid his re-election effort in the fall – again, after Hill’s suspension. Lewis has a long track record as a door-to-door canvasser in West Orlando. In her depositions, she testified she canvassed for both candidates.
But when attorneys prodded Lewis for information about her work for Rose at Orlando City Hall, she grew defensive.
“I got another hour to go,” the record showed Scheller telling an irritated Lewis.
“Not with me you don’t,” she said.
Hill’s attorney, Fritz Scheller, was forced to halt the April deposition after a fraction of the time he planned to spend questioning Lewis as she insisted she wanted to speak to various individuals, including an attorney.
When the group reconvened in May, Lewis initially appeared ready to answer his questions—until his focus turned to her business, Eboni Beauty Academy, through which the political money was funneled.
“Let the record show the witness is refusing to answer,” Scheller said.
High stakes
If Lewis is prevented from testifying in this case, prosecutors will lose a key witness they need to support the investigator who examined Hill and the elderly woman’s financial records.
Hill’s team, meanwhile, will have created doubt they can use to convince a jury that Hill should be found not guilty – a tectonic shift from the spring of 2024, when the domino effect of Hill’s arrest reached Gov. DeSantis’ office, which issued an executive order suspending Hill as she attended a city commission meeting.
Lewis refused to answer WFTV’s questions when a crew knocked on her front door Thursday. Neither Rose nor Bain have responded to inquiries about Lewis.
Click here to download our free news, weather and smart TV apps. And click here to stream Channel 9 Eyewitness News live.
©2025 Cox Media Group
