COLUMBUS, Ohio - The Supreme Court of Ohio heard arguments on Wednesday morning on whether or not the conviction of a Youngstown murder suspect Lavontae Knight should remain overturned.

Knight was accused in the murder of Trevice Harris and the attempted murder of Quanisha Bosworth in December of 2018 and was convicted in 2022. However, the Ohio Seventh District Court of Appeals reversed this conviction in 2024.

This initiated a legal battle on why the conviction was thrown out, with the lower court citing the "cumulative error" doctrine, which suggests that while individual mistakes might not be enough to overturn a verdict on their own, multiple mistakes added together can deprive a defendant of their right to a fair trial.

Specifically the Appeals Court found two errors: That the prosecution waited three years to share DNA evidence with the defense, and a procedural issue with the jury, with a juror believing she had been followed home during the trial and the judge denying a request from the defense for more time to prepare for the questioning of the jurors about this incident.

Attorney Rhys Cartwright-Jones argued in favor of the Appeals Court's decision to overturn the case.

Meanwhile, attorney Chauncey Keller said that the court should reverse the overturning of Knight's conviction, arguing that these two errors did not combine and did not happen at the trial itself.

Specifically, Keller argued that while the court did find error in the delayed production of the DNA evidence, it did not find error in the introduction or use of said evidence at the trial itself.

As for the juror hearing error, Keller argued that while the court found error in the judge's denial of the defense's request to continue the hearing, it did not find error in the court's determination that there was no juror misconduct and the incident did not impact deliberations in any way.

"Although the juror in question said that she was followed by some court spectators for a couple of turns on her drive home, she confirmed under oath that it did not enter the deliberations, that it did not impact the deliberations [and] that the verdict was based on the evidence," Keller said.

Attorney Jana Bosch echoed Keller's arguments stating that the errors by themselves were unrelated and individually harmless to the trial. 

"Because each individual error we're talking about is harmless by itself, you can't just add together a bunch of harmless things and find harm. You would need to have something that made them greater than their individuality," Bosch said.

The matter was taken under advisement.