YOUNGSTOWN — Lavontae Knight, 29, has had some interesting attorneys working on his behalf in his two murder cases in the past six years.

He was represented in one case by Lou DeFabio, the same defense attorney who defended Brandon Crump, the killer of 4-year-old Rowan Sweeney.

Knight also was defended by well-known defense attorney Dave Betras in one of his murder cases. And he was defended on appeal by one of the most senior defense attorneys in the area, John Juhasz, who is now head of the criminal division of the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office.

In his current case before the Ohio Supreme Court — a case that will determine whether Knight gets a new trial in a murder case that resulted in a 58-years-to-life prison sentence — Knight is represented by Rhys Cartwright-Jones, who worked as a top appeals attorney for the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office before he became a defense attorney.

Lining up on the other side of Knight’s current case is the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office, which is prosecuting the appeal pending before the Ohio Supreme Court — the question of whether Knight should be granted a new trial in the murder of Trevice Harris on Dec. 30, 2018, in Youngstown and wounding of Harris’ girlfriend. Cuyahoga County is arguing that Knight should not get a new trial.

Knight was convicted on all counts in his 2022 trial before Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin. But the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals ordered that Knight get a new trial in June 2024, saying Durkin committed cumulative errors in Knight’s case.

One error was when Durkin denied defense attorney Dave Betras time to study and prepare for a hearing after the trial was over. At the hearing, the defense and prosecution questioned jurors about a remark one juror made to others about being afraid because she thought she was being followed when she left the courthouse one afternoon during Knight’s trial.

The appeals panel also found that Durkin erred in deciding that the remedy for a former assistant Mahoning County prosecutor not being timely turning over evidence to the defense prior to the trial was to postpone the trial instead of a more serious sanction.

The Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office, then under Prosecutor Gina DeGenova, appealed that decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, and the state’s top court agreed to hear the matter.

Because Lynn Maro was elected Mahoning County prosecutor last November, and she hired Juhasz to be her new chief of the criminal division, the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office was not able to represent the State in the appeal. The Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office was appointed and filed their arguments against Knight getting a new trial earlier.

IMPORTANT ISSUE

The case and issues raised by the 7th District are important enough that the Ohio Attorney General’s Office filed an amicus brief on behalf of the state, making additional arguments to the top court asking that Knight’s convictions not be overturned.

An amicus brief is filed 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 Cuyahoga team and Ohio Attorney General’s office argued that the decision the 7th District made to grant Knight a new trial represented 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 said 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.”

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 the vehicle in which Harris was killed — was serious enough to dismiss the charges against Knight.

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, also was involved in late evidence in another Knight murder case, involving victim Josh Donatelli. DeFabio represented Knight in that case.

The attorney general’s amicus brief stated that the reason its office wanted to weigh in on the appeal in the Harris case was 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 filing stated.

After Knight’s trial in the Harris killing, Durkin’s bailiff told Durkin about a statement she overheard from a juror about the juror 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 appeals ruling stated that even though the jurors were questioned and the attorneys were allowed to participate, Durkin “should have permitted (Betras and the prosecutor’s office) some time before conducting the” interviews.

The attorney general’s brief to the Ohio Supreme Court stated that the 7th District’s opinion 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.”

NEW DEFENSE FILING

Cartwright-Jones, in his filing with the Ohio Supreme Court Monday, said the State’s appeal raises the following issue: Is cumulative error review limited to mistakes (by a judge) that occur solely between (jury selection) and verdict?

“The defense demonstrates below — relying on several firmly established doctrines — that the answer is ‘no.’ Once that threshold is removed, Knight’s convictions emerge from the record dotted with errors that call the fairness of the entire proceeding into doubt.” Cartwright-Jones asked the top court to order that Knight get a new trial.

Cartwright-Jones’ argument lists several cases that touch upon the issue of whether errors that were made in a case prior to the start of jury selection or after the verdict are relevant.

One, for example, was a 2003 federal appeal decision regarding a claim of a defendant getting ineffective assistance of his attorney at his sentencing hearing. The appeals court ruled that the defendant had a right to effective assistance of counsel at the sentencing. The appeals ruling found the judge erred in not holding a hearing on the issue and ordered him to do so.

Cartwright-Jones added that if the Ohio Supreme Court were to only consider cumulative errors that occurred from jury selection to verdict in a trial, “one

would have to ignore dozens of capital (murder) cases on review that apply cumulative error to sentencing proceedings.”

In addition to the Harris murder, Knight pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter in September 2023 in the Oct. 25, 2018, shooting death of Donatelli, 26, at Donatelli’s home on Imperial Street on the West Side of Youngstown. Knight was sentenced to eight years in prison to be served at the same time as his sentence in the Harris killing.