YOUNGSTOWN — The Ohio Supreme Court announced it will review a ruling by the 7th District Court of Appeals that ordered a new trial for Lavontae Knight in Knight’s conviction for killing Trevice Harris on Dec. 30, 2018, in Youngstown and wounding Harris’ girlfriend.

Knight, 29, was sentenced to 58 years to life in prison in September 2022 after being convicted at trial of aggravated murder, attempted aggravated murder and two counts of kidnapping, but the 7th District Court of Appeals in June ordered that Knight get a new trial, saying Mahoning County Common Pleas Judge John Durkin made “cumulative errors that deprived (Knight) of a fair trial.”

But the Mahoning County prosecutor’s office appealed that decision to the Ohio Supreme Court, which recently agreed to review the 7th District ruling. The Ohio Supreme Court has discretion on whether it will review appeals brought to it.

The appeals panel found that the judge erred when he denied defense attorney Dave Betras more time to study and prepare for a hearing where the judge and attorneys 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 prosecutor not timely turning over evidence to the defense was to postpone the trial. The decision did not indicate what type of more aggressive remedy it thought was appropriate, but the defense had requested that the case be dismissed.

“The lengthy delay in disclosing the favorable evidence in this case, the questionable tactics used by the same assistant prosecutor in another of (Knight’s) cases, and (Durkin’s) leniency to (prosecutors) in (Knight’s) other case for similar conduct lead us to conclude that more than a (postponement) in this case was warranted,” the 7th District ruling stated.

Appeals court Judge Cheryl Waite dissented from the majority opinion, stating that despite the large number of safeguards provided to assure a fair trial, “and taking into account the reality of the human fallibility of the participants, there can be no such thing as an error-free perfect trial, and that the Constitution does not guarantee such a trial.”

The next steps are that attorneys for Knight and the state will file briefs with the Ohio Supreme Court on the matter and then an oral hearing will be held before the Ohio Supreme Court issues a ruling on whether to affirm or overturn the 7th District Court’s ruling.

However, in this case, the party that appealed the 7th District ruling in 2022, the Mahoning County Prosecutor’s Office, has a potential conflict of interest and is asking the Ohio Supreme Court to appoint attorneys from the Cuyahoga County Prosecutor’s Office to handle it.

Cuyahoga County has agreed to handle the matter, Mahoning County Prosecutor Lynn Maro said Wednesday. Maro, who became county prosecutor Jan. 6 after winning the Nov. 5 election, said the conflict relates to John Juhasz, her chief of the criminal division of the prosecutor’s office.

Juhasz was the attorney who represented Knight in the appeal before the 7th District Court of Appeals. Juhasz and Maro both worked as defense attorneys for many years before Maro was elected county prosecutor.

In a filing Tuesday to the Ohio Supreme Court, Maro stated that Juhasz represented Harris “in his private practice, and before his new position at the prosecutor’s office” and stated that it is “ethically appropriate that he give notice of the conflict, and that the entire (county prosecutor’s) office withdraw as counsel.”

It is one of several cases in which Maro has asked for other county prosecutors offices to step in to handle potential conflicts of interest since she became prosecutor.