The Summit County Prosecutor, Elliot Kolkovich, expressed his disagreement with the appeals court’s decision to overturn Sydney Powell’s conviction for the murder of her mother, stating that it contradicted over a hundred years of legal precedent. In December, the appeals court ruled in favor of Powell.
Recently, in a filing on February 7, Kolkovich asked the Ohio Supreme Court to examine the appeals court’s ruling. He raised concerns that accepting the lower court’s decision could have broader implications on trial processes across Ohio, potentially reshaping the sequence of trials in the state.
According to the court documents, the Ninth District Court of Appeals found that the trial court in Powell’s case erred by not allowing her defense team to present witnesses who could counter essential state testimony regarding Powell’s plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.
In September 2023, the 24-year-old was found guilty of hitting 50-year-old Brenda Powell in the head with an iron skillet before fatally stabbing her nearly 30 times in the neck in March 2020. A Summit County jury convicted Powell of two counts of murder as well as one count each of felonious assault and tampering with evidence. She was sentenced to life in prison with eligibility for parole after 15 years.
The appeals court sided with Powell’s attorneys and reversed Powell’s conviction in December 2024.
“By issuing its decision, the Ninth District broke with more than a century of precedent, vacated a murder conviction entered by a jury after hearing extensive testimony during an eight-day trial, and issued inaccurate guidance to trial courts suggesting that criminal defendants have an unconditional right to present sur-rebuttal evidence whenever they assert an affirmative defense,” Kolkovich and his co-counsel asserted in a memorandum in support of the state’s appeal.
CASE DETAILS
Powell submitted her insanity defense in 2022, arguing she was “out of touch with reality and unable to know the wrongfulness of her acts,” according to court records. The prosecutors in Powell’s case, supported by their own experts, maintained that Powell had never demonstrated any psychotic symptoms before the murder and that she knowingly killed her mother as part of her efforts to conceal from her parents that she had been suspended from Mount Union University.
Powell’s attorneys appealed her conviction based on testimony given by an expert called by the state that cast doubt on Powell’s claim that she was suffering a severe mental illness at the time of the killing, according to a decision written by Ninth Circuit Judge Jennifer L. Hensal. Powell’s legal team supported her insanity defense with opinions from three experts and testimony from her psychiatrist.
The witness for the state, psychologist Dr. Sylvia O’Bradovich, disagreed with the experts who testified for Powell and said when interviewing Powell, the 24-year-old “tended to exaggerate of feign having symptoms of a severe mental illness that she claimed rendered her unable to function.” The state witness also critiqued the methodology of Powell’s experts.Â
The trial court denied a motion from Powell’s attorneys to bring a witness to refute O’Bradovich’s claims, citing “lots and lots and lots of expert testimony in this matter,” according to the decision. Powell’s attorneys argued this violated her rights to a fair trial and due process.
Hensal concluded in the court’s decision that there was reasonable grounds for the appeal because “once the State’s expert had testified, the trial court erred by denying her the opportunity to present rebuttal testimony on [the plea of not guilty by reason of insanity.]”
Kolkovich’s appeal claims that Ohio courts have “long recognized” that criminal defendants do not have an unambiguous right to present “sur-rebuttal evidence.” Furthermore, the prosecutor asserts that the Ninth District court failed to account for the fact that Powell requested to rebut claims that her attorneys brought up elicited in their cross-examination of O’Bradovich. Kolkovich argues that a defendant is only entitled to surrebut new testimony raised by the prosecution, not matters introduced by the defendants themselves.
“In sum, the Ninth District’s decision contravenes more than a century of authority, will lead trial courts astray, and transform trials in Lorain, Medina, Summit, and Wayne Counties to an endless sequence of rebuttal and sur-rebuttal,” prosecutors argued.
Kolkovich stated that Ohio’s legal system allows for the upholding of criminal convictions “unless the appealing party is able to demonstrate prejudice from an error.” Prosecutors also argued that the Ninth District “failed to consider whether the denial of sur-rebuttal testimony in the matter was a harmless error.”
“In doing so, it decided to seize on what would at best constitute a technical 13 mistake to supplant the determination of a jury of 12 citizens who heard extensive testimony on the very issue from the very same people that Powell wanted to recall in sur-rebuttal,” the appeal states.
