Youngstown Daily Legal News

Man who stabbed mom, daughter to death loses his appeal

ANNIE YAMSON
Special to the Legal News
Published: January 4, 2016

A decision recently released by the 1st District Court of Appeals affirmed the murder convictions of Brian Everett, a Cincinnati man who stabbed to death a woman and her 12-year-old child.

A jury in the Hamilton County Court of Common Pleas did not buy Everett’s self defense argument and he was found guilty of the two murders and tampering with evidence.

In his appeal to the 1st District court, Everett claimed that the trial court provided the jury with improper instructions on self defense, that his attorney was ineffective, that the jury’s verdicts with respect to the child’s death were inconsistent and that the verdicts were against the sufficiency and manifest weight of the evidence.

Case summary states that Everett called 911 on May 30, 2012 and reported a stabbing.

When police arrived at his apartment, they found the bodies of Nicole Smith and her daughter, Stephanie, covered in blood and lying together near the front door of the apartment. Both had been stabbed multiple times.

Everett was found sitting on the couch in his living room, smoking a cigarette, also with blood on him.

He told police that Smith “came at me with a knife and she got cut” and that Stephanie “got in the way during the fight and she got cut also.”

Everett claimed that he allowed Smith and her daughter to stay at his home that evening because their electricity was out.

According to him, Smith instigated an argument and then “turned ashido,” eventually grabbing a knife from the kitchen and attacking Everett.

During the ensuing struggle, Stephanie allegedly got another knife and tried to intervene, causing Everett to swing his arm and stab her in the chest.

At trial, Dr. Karen Looman, deputy coroner, testified that the injuries sustained by the victims took place about an hour before Everett called the police.

Smith had a stab wound to her chest and right arm and five stab wounds in her back. Stephanie also had a stab wound in her back and defensive wounds on her hands with additional indications of asphyxiation or deprivation of oxygen.

When asked how Smith ended up with stab wounds in her back, Everett told police “that’s when she retreated.”

However, at trial, Everett stated that he reached around Smith to stab her in the back, a claim that was inconsistent with the coroner’s conclusion that she was stabbed by a person standing behind her.

At the scene of the killings, police found a knife that Everett had wiped down with a cloth.

After hearing the evidence, the jury found Everett guilty of the voluntary manslaughter and felony murder of Stephanie, the felony murder of Nicole and tampering with evidence.

After merging some of the counts, the trial court sentenced Everett on the two murder counts and the tampering count to a total of 33 years to life in prison.

On direct appeal to a panel of three judges in the 1st District court, Everett first argued that the trial court’s instructions to the jury on self defense did not make clear that he had no duty to retreat because he was attacked in his own home.

After reviewing the jury instructions, the court of appeals found otherwise.

“When read together, the instructions to the jury were not confusing,” Judge Patrick DeWine wrote on behalf of the court of appeals.

The appellate panel also held that Everett’s counsel was not ineffective for failing to object to the self defense instructions.

“Even if counsel had requested jury instructions that managed to more clearly explain Everett’s duty to retreat, we are unable to conclude that the result of the trial would have been different,” DeWine wrote.

In another assignment of error, Everett contended that his convictions were against the sufficiency and manifest weight of the evidence.

“He insists that his self defense claim was credible and that, because he acted in self defense, there was no reason for him to try to tamper with evidence,” DeWine wrote. “The jury, however, was in the best position to determine the credibility of the evidence, particularly with regard to witness testimony.”

Weighing all of the evidence and all reasonable inferences, the court of appeals held that it could not conclude that the jury lost its way and created a manifest miscarriage of justice.

“It is difficult, if not impossible, to reconcile Everett’s self defense claim with the physical evidence that both victims were stabbed in the back,” DeWine wrote.

The court of appeals also held that the jury’s verdicts were consistent before it overruled Everett’s appeal and affirmed the judgment of the Hamilton County court.

Judges Russell Mock and Peter Stautberg joined DeWine to form the majority.

The case is cited State v. Everett, 2015-Ohio-5273.

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