Sydney Powell and her mother, Brenda Powell (Summit County Sheriff’s Office: Akron Children’s Hospital)
A 24-year-old woman in Ohio serving a life sentence for brutally beating her mother with a cast iron skillet before fatally stabbing her more than two dozen times may get a second trial after an appellate court overturned her conviction.
The Ninth Judicial District Court of Appeals on Thursday reversed the conviction, reasoning that the judge presiding over Sydney Powell’s murder trial last year erred in refusing to allow Powell to call an expert witness to rebut the expert who testified for the State regarding Powell’s mental state at the time of the crime.
Powell had pleaded not guilty by reason of insanity to charges that she murdered her mother, Brenda Powell, to prevent her from finding out that Powell had been suspended from college.
A jury in September 2023 found Powell guilty on two counts of murder — special felonies, one count of second-degree felonious assault, and one count of third-degree tampering with evidence. Summit County Common Pleas Court Judge Kelly McLaughlin subsequently ordered her to serve 15 years to life in a state correctional facility.
The appellate court’s order
Powell, who presented testimony from three expert witnesses at trial, appealed her conviction on grounds that McLaughlin was wrong to prevent her from presenting an additional expert witness to rebut the lone expert who testified for the prosecution. The appellate court agreed, according to a decision written by Judge Jennifer L. Hensal
The three expert witnesses who testified for Powell concluded that she was “unable to engage in any reasoning or conscious thought” during her mother’s murder, testifying that she was “completely totally out of her mind” and “untethered from the world as we all know it.”
The State’s expert, Dr. Silvia O’Bradovich, testified that Powell was sane at the time of the crime. However, she also went beyond the question of Powell’s sanity by offering a “pointed critique” of Powell’s experts and their “fundamentally flawed” methodologies. When Powell moved to rebut the doctor’s testimony, McLaughlin denied the motion “based solely on the conclusion that there had been ‘lots and lots and lots of expert testimony in this matter,’” the appellate court said.
“Ms. Powell was not required to preemptively counter these arguments. Considering that Dr. O’Bradovich did not include the critique in her expert report and the State’s cross-examination of each expert was minimal, it may well have been impossible for Ms. Powell to do so in any event,” the appellate court order states. “Under these circumstances, however, Ms. Powell had an ‘unconditional right’ to present rebuttal testimony. This Court therefore agrees that once the State’s expert had testified, the trial court erred by denying her the opportunity to present rebuttal testimony on [not guilty by reason of insanity].”
The appellate court ordered the Summit County Court of Common Pleas to “carry this judgment into execution,” which likely means Powell will be granted another trial.
Brenda Powell’s murder
As Law&Crime previously reported, prosecutors at trial argued that Powell attacked her mother because Powell had been suspended from attending Mount Union University due to poor academic performance, a secret she did not want her mother to learn about.
At the time of the slaying, Brenda Powell — a child-life specialist at Akron Children’s Hospital Showers Family Center for Childhood Cancer and Blood Disorders — was on the phone with Associate Dean of Students Michelle Gaffney and Dean of Students John Frasier.
Associate Dean Gaffney testified about what happened while they were on the phone with Powell’s mom.
“The phone cut off at some point after, I would say, somewhere in the neighborhood of six or seven of those thudding, those sort of thud sounds, and the screaming had continued,” he said, according to a report from NBC News.
The line cut out, so Gaffney and Frasier called back, and another woman picked up the phone, claiming that she was Brenda Powell.
“The voice on the other end said, ‘Yes, this is Brenda. Yes, this is Brenda,’ “Gaffney testified. “It was not Brenda. I was sure it was Sydney. Both Dean Frasier and I looked at each other and sort of shook our heads at each other and said that’s not Brenda. He then said, ‘Sydney, I think this is you. This is not Brenda.’ The phone [then] went dead.”
The two school administrators called law enforcement and requested a welfare check on the Powell household.
Powell’s attorneys argued that she was a diagnosed schizophrenic amid a psychotic break when she attacked her mother and should be found not guilty by reason of insanity. Her defense team called three psychiatrists who concurred with this notion, but prosecutors called their clinical psychologist, who testified that Powell’s actions did not align with the actions of someone having a psychotic break.
