Staff file photo / Ed Runyan ... Defense and prosecuting attorneys gathered for a sidebar conversation with Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin during the Lavontae Knight aggravated murder trial in August 2022. Knight was convicted.

YOUNGSTOWN — Because the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office has a conflict of interest in an appeal before the Ohio Supreme Court involving Youngstown man Lavontae Knight’s aggravated murder conviction, the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office is handling the appeal.

Last month, two assistant Cuyahoga County prosecutors and Cuyahoga County Prosecutor Michael O’Malley submitted their merit brief to the high court, giving the reasons why they believe Knight, 29, should not get a new trial in the Dec.30, 2018, killing of Trevice Harris in Youngstown and the wounding of Harris’ girlfriend.

They argued against the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals ruling that Knight should get a new trial because Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin made “cumulative errors that deprived (Knight) of a fair trial.”

The Cuyahoga team argued that the 7th District’s use of “cumulative-error doctrine” was an “unreasonable expansion” of the notion that multiple errors that might not ordinarily result in a new trial could accumulate into an unfair trial.

The Cuyahoga team says the 7th District’s ruling “extended” the use of cumulative-error doctrine in that the doctrine typically applies only to errors “in a trial.” But the 7th District extended its use to “include perceived errors that occurred before and after trial.” The filing called the 7th District court’s ruling an incorrect “expansion of an otherwise limited doctrine.”

The Trevice Harris murder was was one of two 2018 murder cases around the same time involving Knight that raised questions about the conduct of the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office, then under Prosecutor Paul Gains. Durkin oversaw both cases.

Attorneys for Knight in the Harris case complained to Durkin that late disclosure of information to the defense — results of DNA testing done on the back seat of a vehicle in which Harris was killed — was serious enough to dismiss the charges against Knight.

Durkin did not dismiss the charges, but he postponed the trial. When the trial took place in August 2022, Knight was convicted on all charges and was sentenced to 58 years to life in prison.

Two of the three 7th District judges stated that Durkin did not apply a large enough sanction to the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s office for the late disclosure of evidence in the Harris murder, in part because the same prosecutor involved in the late evidence in the Harris murder case, former Assistant Prosecutor Dawn Cantalamessa, was also involved in late evidence in another of Knight’s murder cases, involving victim Josh Donatelli.

The 7th District ruling stated that the late evidence in the Harris murder case was one of two errors in that case — the second one being Durkin’s failure to give defense attorney Dave Betras enough time to prepare for a hearing after the trial was over.

That hearing was scheduled to talk to the jurors about a remark one juror made about feeling afraid because she thought she was being followed home when she left the courthouse during the Knight trial.

The jurors said they heard the woman’s remark but none thought the remark affected their decision on Knight’s guilt or innocence, the 7th District ruling stated. The 7th District’s ruling stated that “While these errors alone do not constitute reversible errors, the cumulative effect of them constituted deprivation of a fair trial.”

In addition to the Cuyahoga County team filing a response in the Knight appeal, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost’s Office filed what is called an amicus brief with the Ohio Supreme Court.

An amicus brief is when a person or group that is not a party to a case but has a strong interest in it asks a court for permission to submit a brief with a goal of influencing the court’s decision, according to the Cornell Law School’s Legal Information Institute.

The Ohio Attorney General’s Office deployed its Solicitor General’s Office headed by Solicitor General T. Elliot Gaiser and two deputy solicitors general to write the brief. The Office of the Solicitor General “represents the State of Ohio and its agencies on appeals in the U.S. Supreme Court, Ohio Supreme Court and other state and federal courts, according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office website.

The Attorney General’s brief is similar to the one filed by the Cuyahoga County team, but states that the reason its office wanted to weigh in on this appeal is that “Preserving murder convictions against improper reversals is of great interest to the State. The attorney general also often serves as a special prosecutor in criminal cases. For these reasons, the attorney general is interested in holding the line between harmless and prejudicial error, particularly in cases where a jury found the defendant guilty.”

The amicus brief acknowledged that Mahoning prosecutors turned over evidence in the Harris killing “long after it acquired the evidence,” but it was turned over before trial.

After the trial, Durkin’s bailiff told Durkin about a statement she overheard from a juror about feeling as if she had been followed in her car from the court parking lot the night before the verdicts. Durkin called the jurors back the following week to testify under oath regarding what they heard about the fellow juror’s concerns and how it affected them.

Betras asked Durkin for more time to prepare questions for the jurors, but Durkin overruled the request, citing the need to conduct the hearing quickly, “before memories fade” and to avoid anything else happening.

The attorney general’s brief states that the 7th District’s ruling that the “unique circumstances” involving the two “perceived errors” deprived Knight of a fair trial, but the Attorney General’s brief called that “wrong. Knight received a fair trial.”