Staff photo / Ed Runyan Per’asia S. Godfrey showed her happiness and relief while talking to her attorney, Mark Lavelle, after a jury found Godfrey not guilty of felonious assault or a lesser offense late Wednesday in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.

YOUNGSTOWN — The jury in the Per’asia S. Godfrey felonious assault trial found her not guilty Wednesday afternoon.

The jury deliberated more than six hours before announcing it had reached a verdict about 6 p.m. Trial testimony began Monday and concluded about 11:30 a.m. Wednesday, when the jury began to deliberate.

The two assistant prosecutors congratulated defense attorney Mark Lavelle after the verdicts were read by Mahoning County Common Pleas Court Judge Anthony D’Apolito. In addition to the jury finding Godfrey not guilty of felonious assault, it also found her not guilty of the lesser included offense of aggravated assault.

If Godfrey had been convicted of felonious assault, she could have gotten more than eight years in prison. Aggravated assault would have carried a lesser amount of potential prison time.

After the not guilty verdicts, Lavelle told deputies he wanted Godfrey released from their custody immediately. He was told Godfrey had to be released from the jail. After a short time, Godfrey went with deputies, and her family was told Godfrey would be released in an hour or so.

Godfrey was accused of stabbing another woman during a large fracas involving young people, including kids from Warren, coming to Cameron Avenue on the South Side of Youngstown to fight young people there, most of whom were from Godfrey’s family.

CLOSING ARGUMENTS

Closing arguments in the trial Wednesday suggested that despite a video that showed the June 13, 2024, fracas, the video wasn’t enough to prove whether Godfrey was guilty.

Instead, jurors were going to have to use the evidence they had — videos and testimony, for instance, and draw their own conclusions, defense attorney Mark Lavelle said during closing arguments.

“The prosecutor has never presented you with any indication — video evidence, pictures, physical evidence — of a knife,” Lavelle said. “We don’t know who had a knife.”

Lavelle said Mahoning County Assistant Prosecutor Anissa Modarelli wanted jurors to use a section of video showing Godfrey with her right arm in the air in a way that a person might hold a knife before stabbing someone to conclude that Godfrey stabbed the victim.

Lavelle said prosecutors talked about the amount of blood the victim lost that evening to convince jurors that “somebody must pay for this. Unfortunately, we don’t know who that somebody is. And more significantly, they don’t know who that somebody is.”

On a screen behind Lavelle and Modarelli while they were giving closing arguments was a still frame from the video showing Godfrey’s arm in the air and several other people nearby. But the image does not show the victim.

Modarelli said there is no video that shows what happened just after that image was recorded.

Lavelle held up a copy of that still image, saying, “There is nothing in this picture … nothing in (Godfrey’s) hand that we can see. Not one picture, not one video, nothing to demonstrate that (Godfrey) had any sort of weapon.”

He added, “She’s being charged. She’s being accused because of the way she threw a punch,” Lavelle said. “If I had a knife in my hand and I was going to use it, you are going to see it. There is nothing there.”

PROSECUTORS

Modarelli addressed Lavelle’s remarks by saying, “The state concedes we did not present a weapon for you.”

But Modarelli referenced an example given during jury selection — how a juror can make inferences based on other facts to decide what happened. She gave the example of a young boy and a missing pie.

“You leave a cherry pie right here. And little Johnny is in the room. You walk out. And you come back, and the pie is all gone. But there is red all over Johnny’s face. You can infer that Johnny ate the pie. You didn’t have to see him, but you can make that inference,” Modarelli said.

“The inference is simple. The defendant stabbed the victim. Did you see a knife?” Modarelli asked the jurors. “I don’t know. You watch it. Watch it in slow motion,” she said of the video. “You tell me. Tell yourselves what you see. Believe what you see, because that is important.”

Modarelli said to consider the image of Godfrey with her hand in the air in a stabbing position and then the knowledge that the victim arrived at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital 10 minutes later, “covered in blood with stab wounds and lacerations.”

Modarelli said prosecutors know who committed the stabbing. “The victim told us who it was. You can see who it is.”

Modarelli said the reason there is no video of the moments that followed Godfrey’s hand in the upward position is “the defendant goes out of screen. You don’t have the luxury of seeing the entire event. Unfortunately, the frame cuts off.”

Modarelli asked the jurors to use their “powers of deduction and your reasoning” and find that Godfrey stabbed the victim, causing serious physical harm and committed felonious assault.”