CLEVELAND — An attorney for Bionca Ellis, the woman convicted of killing 3-year-old Julian Wood outside of a North Olmsted Giant Eagle, has filed an appellant’s brief arguing multiple legal errors during her trial.
According to Cuyahoga County Common Pleas Court Records, an appellant’s brief was filed on April 24 by Frank Cavallo.
The brief claims that the court made the following errors:
- “The trial court committed plain error, denying appellant her constitutional right to a fair trial, when the state’s expert repeatedly misstated Ohio’s legal standard for insanity, permitting the jury to deliberate under a materially false impression, in spite of the court’s instruction.”
- “The trial court violated defendant’s right to due process under the United States Constitution and the Ohio Constitution’s guarantee of due course of law by failing to issue a curative instruction informing the jury that a verdict of not guilty by reason of insanity results in court-supervised commitment, where the state’s closing argument affirmatively framed the verdict as the only mechanism for imposing “accountability” for the charged offenses, creating a false and misleading framework for the jury’s deliberations.”
- “Bionca Ellis’s rights under the Sixth and Fourteenth Amendments of the US Constitution and Article I, Section 10 of the Ohio Constitution were violated because her trial counsel failed to provide her with effective representation.”
3News previously reported that Ellis’ attorneys filed an appeal in November 2025, asking the Eighth District Court of Appeals to review the punishment and provide a full transcript…