CLEVELAND (Court TV) — A woman sentenced to life in prison without the possibility of parole for killing a 3-year-old child in a parking lot has filed an appeal claiming her jury was misled by the prosecution.
Bionca Ellis appears in court during her murder trial. (Court TV)
Bionca Ellis, 34, was convicted of multiple charges, including murder and attempted murder, in the stabbing death of a child and his mother outside of an Ohio supermarket. Ellis never denied her role in the attack; at trial, her attorneys argued that she was not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) due to her documented history of mental illness.
In an appeal brief filed with the Cuyahoga County Court of Appeals, Ellis’ attorneys argue that her trial jury erroneously convicted her because it was misled by the state’s expert and the prosecutors themselves.
On June 3, 2024, Ellis stole a knife from a thrift store before walking into a nearby Giant Eagle supermarket with the weapon. After seeing Margot Wood pushing her 3-year-old son, Julian, in a shopping cart, Ellis followed them from the store. Once in the parking lot, she attacked the pair, stabbing them multiple times before walking away. Julian died from his injuries.
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Witnesses testified at Ellis’ trial that she appeared nonchalant after the stabbing as she began to walk away from the scene. When one person asked her if she knew she had stabbed a child, she simply shrugged. When police ordered her to the ground at the scene, she complied. In interviews with officers, she was unwilling to discuss the incident and repeatedly said, “lawyer.” Days later, at her arraignment, Ellis appeared to laugh, pose and wave at the camera.
At trial, Ellis’ defense emphasized her documented history of schizophrenia and unusual behavior. Prosecutors called Dr. Stephen Noffsinger as an expert during their rebuttal case at trial to counter the claims made by Ellis’ defense that she was insane at the time of the crime. But Ellis’ attorneys say that Noffsinger’s entire evaluation was conducted under the wrong legal standard. “Rather than opining on whether Ms. Ellis was able to know the wrongfulness of her actions, as required by Ohio law, he instead asserted that she did not have an affirmative belief that her conduct was right. The distinction is significant. Rather than assessing her ability to appreciate the moral weight of her actions, as the law contemplates, he instead substituted his own, more stringent standard that would find legal insanity only where a positive belief of ‘rightness’ existed.”
Ellis’ attorneys say Noffsinger misstated the required standard for NGRI approximately 12 times during his testimony, and then prosecutors underlined the incorrect information. “Rather than correcting this misinformation, the prosecution doubled down — repeating it during their closing argument,” Ellis’ attorneys said. “The prosecution advised the jury — again, erroneously — that an NGRI verdict would fall short of holding Bionca accountable. Is it any wonder then, that a jury so misinformed would lose its way?”
The brief also faults Ellis’ trial attorneys as providing ineffective representation at trial for failing to object to both the expert’s testimony and the prosecution’s comments. “At bottom this jury was tricked, not only by a misunderstanding of the facts,” the brief says. “But those facts need to be screened through the applicable law, not some made-up facsimile to weigh the scales in favor of conviction.”
The state has not filed its response to the brief and no hearing date is scheduled.
