COLUMBUS, Ohio - Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost is urging the state's highest court to reinstate the aggravated murder conviction of a Youngstown man, arguing a lower appellate court wrongly overturned the verdict.

Lavontae Knight, who was sentenced in September 2022 to life in prison with the possibility of parole after 58 years, had his conviction for the 2018 shooting death of Trevice Harris reversed by the Seventh District Court of Appeals in Mahoning County.  Harris was found shot to death in a car at the Shell gas station on Market Street.

The appellate court ruled on June 6 that a "cumulative nature of errors" infringed on Knight's right to a fair trial, leading to an order for a new trial.

The legal doctrine of "cumulative error" asserts that while individual, minor mistakes made during a trial may not be significant on their own, their combined effect can be substantial enough to deny a defendant a fair legal process.

The Seventh District's decision highlighted two primary issues in Knight's original trial. First, the state's prosecutor, Dawn Cantalamessa, failed to disclose DNA evidence found on the victim's vehicle for two years before the trial. While the trial court did not dismiss the case, it did grant a "trial continuance," a postponement of the trial date. Cantalamessa was later removed from the case by Judge John Durkin and subsequently resigned from the Mahoning County prosecutor's office.

The second issue involved the handling of a hearing after the jury delivered its verdict. After the jury delivered its decision, a juror indicated feeling followed by courtroom spectators. The trial court then held a "Remmer hearing," a proceeding designed to determine if outside influences improperly affected jury deliberations. The appellate court found that the trial court made an error by not providing Knight's defense counsel with adequate time to prepare for this hearing, despite ultimately concluding that there was no actual juror misconduct.

Attorney General Dave Yost has filed a brief with the Ohio Supreme Court contending that the two alleged errors were "harmless," meaning they did not ultimately affect the trial's outcome, and "unrelated," so they could not combine to create a prejudicial effect. He argues that Knight received a fundamentally fair trial, underscoring that the conviction largely rested on the testimony of a surviving victim, who identified Knight as the gunman. Yost's brief asserts that neither the timing of the evidence disclosure nor the procedures of the post-trial juror hearing impacted Bosworth's credibility or the evidence presented to the jury.

The Ohio Supreme Court will now consider these arguments as it determines whether to reinstate Knight's conviction or uphold the appellate court's order for a new trial.