AKRON, Ohio (Court TV) — Prosecutors in Ohio are asking the Ohio Supreme Court to intervene as they fight to have Sydney Powell‘s murder conviction reinstated.
Sydney Powell, accused in her mother’s death, appears in court Thursday, Sept. 7, 2023. (Court TV)
Powell is currently serving a sentence of 15 years to life for murdering her mother, Brenda Powell, in 2020. At her murder trial in 2023, Sydney pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity and presented testimony from several doctors who said she suffered from multiple mental illnesses, including schizoaffective disorder.
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In December, Ohio’s Ninth District Court of Appeals granted Sydney’s motion for a new trial, finding that the trial judge erred by not allowing her defense to present a sur-rebuttal.
In their motion arguing for Sydney’s conviction to be reinstated, prosecutors said the Ninth District “broke with more than a century of precedent … 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.”
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C. Richley Raley Jr., the prosecutor representing the State of Ohio in the appeal, warned the appellate decision could have a state-wide impact. “The Ninth District’s erroneous decision not only undoes the deliberative work of those jurors but also has the potential to serve as a vehicle to entirely rewrite the order of trials throughout the State of Ohio. … 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.”
Powell’s insanity defense is considered an “affirmative defense” under Ohio law, and Sydney’s defense argued in its appeal for a new trial that the sur-rebuttal was, in fact, a rebuttal case for the defense’s case-in-chief.
No hearing date has been set for the appeal, and Sydney’s defense has not yet filed a response.
