Attorneys for the defense and prosecution made oral arguments Wednesday morning before the Ohio Supreme Court in the aggravated murder conviction of Lavontae Knight in the Dec. 30, 2018, killing of Trevice Harris and wounding of his girlfriend in Youngstown.

The state’s top court agreed to review the June 2024 decision of the Youngstown-based 7th District Court of Appeals when the 7th District ordered that Knight, 29, get a new trial because of cumulative errors it said Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge John Durkin made in Knight’s 2022 trial.

The ruling said the errors found “do not rise to the level of constitutional error individually, (but) their unique circumstances combine to have impacted (Knight’s) fundamental right to a fair trial.”

The murder took place on Youngstown’s South Side. Knight, who lived on Ferndale Avenue in the city, was sentenced to 58 years to life in prison.

According to an Ohio Supreme Court summary, Harris and his girlfriend had gone to a home in Youngstown on Dec. 30, 2018, to make a donation to the family of a man Harris knew who had been killed. The murder victim was the brother of Lavontae Knight.

Harris’ girlfriend testified at Knight’s trial that when she and Harris entered the home, Knight and another man pointed guns at them and took them to another location, where Knight and the other man started shooting, wounding her and Harris, who died from his injuries. She was able to get in the driver’s seat, get away and call 911.

The summary says an issue under consideration by the Supreme Court is whether individual errors in the legal process of a trial that do not affect the outcome of a trial can be considered under a legal doctrine called “cumulative errors.”

STATE ARGUMENT

Cuyahoga County Assistant Prosecutor Chauncey Keller III led off the arguments on behalf of the state. Because the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office under Lynn Maro had a conflict of interest in the case, Cuyahoga County stepped in to handle the matter.

Keller said the Supreme Court should reverse the 7th District ruling because the facts in this case do not meet the requirements of “cumulative error doctrine” in a way that violated Knight’s rights to a fair trial.

He said one of the purported errors was Durkin’s ruling on what to do about evidence that was late in being turned over to the defense.

And the other was his refusal to give the defense more time to prepare for a hearing that took place after the trial was over regarding remarks a juror made the day before the verdict. She expressed her fears regarding possibly being followed a short distance in her car from the courthouse one night. The hearing on those remarks took place after the trial was over.

“Neither of those happened at trial, and neither combined to deny the right to a fair trial,” Keller said.

DEFENSE ARGUMENT

On Knight’s side was defense attorney Rhys Cartwright-Jones, who was asked immediately upon taking the podium to tell Justice R. Patrick DeWine how Knight suffered harm by the two decisions cited by the appeals court.

Cartwright-Jones said he thinks it was the not-severe-enough sanction Durkin gave for the late-provided evidence.

“One possible sanction is dismissal (of the charges), maybe not necessary,” Cartwright-Jones said. “You have to have some sanction between dismissal and (postponement of the trial date). A good possibility would simply be to advise the jury that this DNA evidence had been withheld by the State and hidden for three years.”

When asked by DeWine if the defense asked for that type of instruction to the jury, Cartwright-Jones acknowledged that no one did. “They asked for the maximum, which was dismissal.”

DeWine asked what was wrong with the defense being granted three months to prepare for trial after learning about DNA evidence.

Cartwright-Jones said three-month postponement of the trial was enough “if you say (postponing the trial for three months) is the appropriate sanction. I don’t think a continuance in this context is a sanction at all. We have a prosecutor who hid evidence in one case involving Lavontae Knight, hid it in a second case involving Lavontae Knight and sat on it for three years.”

Cartwright-Jones was referring to a former assistant Mahoning County prosecutor who resigned not long after Durkin dismissed her from one of Knight’s murder cases because of late evidence.

DeWine again pressed Cartwright Jones on how the two decisions in this case negatively affected his client.

Cartwright-Jones said he needs to show that the “result would have been different” if Durkin would have imposed a stronger sanction on the prosecution for late evidence.

“Had that jury been informed, for example – the sanction that I’m suggesting – that (the jury be told that) the evidence had been hidden for three years.”

“But …no one asked for that,” DeWine said.

“They asked for dismissal and that would (include) any sanction between (postponement) and dismissal,” Cartwright-Jones said.

Cartright-Jones said the 7th District suggested in its ruling that a more severe sanction was warranted. “They said a stronger sanction than a (postponement of the trial) was necessary,” Cartwright-Jones said.

OHIO ATTORNEY GENERAL

Ohio Deputy Solicitor General Jana Bosch was allowed to make oral arguments during the hearing also, talking about the idea of cumulative error.

“The framework to think about that makes sense … is think about the ways the errors relate to each other, such that two or more errors put together would be more than just the sum of their parts.”

She said, “If you have errors that individually are harmless, and when you look at all of the errors in the trial and none of them had a reinforcing effect or compounding effect — think of it as augmenting each other — you can’t find any interaction between the errors, then there’s really no reason to think that many things that essentially had no effect would have an effect when put together.”