TOLEDO, Ohio — The state filed to appeal a Lucas County judge's decision to grant a new trial to a Toledo man convicted of murder, according to a court document issued Tuesday.
Ahmad Williams was convicted in August 2023 after jurors found him guilty of murder and felonious assault. Williams, now 24 years old, claimed his son's death was an accident on Aug. 1, 2022, where he had dropped the infant, according to court records. The infant, who had a fractured skull, died from a fatal brain injury which the state said was caused by abuse.
Sentencing was scheduled for Aug. 31, 2023, but one of the involved jurors contacted the court and said that she was swayed during deliberations and only found Williams guilty when another juror, identified as Juror 3, stated he was an emergency room nurse and the injuries were "definitely due to brain trauma."
Under Ohio law, registered nurses are prohibited from making a medical diagnosis.
The juror who contacted the court implied other jurors relied on Juror 3's information and background as a nurse for the basis of their decisions to find Williams guilty.
EARLIER COVERAGE: Toledo man convicted of murder in infant's death granted a new trial
On that basis, the court granted Williams a retrial on the basis of the juror's "extraneous prejudicial information".
Moreover, the Lucas County prosecutor's office argued in Tuesday's motion to appeal that a retrial in the case of Williams would potentially undermine the trial based on the unavailability of and lapse of memory in witnesses, adding that a lengthy trial would discourage future potential jurors from making statements during deliberations if they thought said statements might be "dissected and criticized by fellow jurors" after the trial ends.
The state also cited other cases as precedent in arguing that personal knowledge and experience that serve as the basis for deliberation statements do not constitute as extraneous prejudicial information.
Additionally, the state wrote in the document that neither the state nor the defense objected to the seating of four total nurses on the jury. According to the appeal, Juror 3 had also alerted the court when a nurse he had worked with testified during the trial. The defense then did not seek to excuse the juror, the state said.
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