Ashtabula woman convicted in home invasion wins appeal
Judge: Too much evidence was based on her history.
An Ashtabula WARREN — woman currently imprisoned for her alleged role as the getaway driver in a January 2014 armed home invasion in Conneaut has been exonerated after a successful appeal, and may soon be released.
Brianna Bernard, of Ashtabula but currently incarcerated in a Marysville women’s prison, was indicted in September of that year on several first- and second-degree felony counts, including aggravated burglary and robbery, kidnapping and felonious assault.
She was convicted by jury in Ashtabula County Common Pleas Court and sentenced in October 2016 on reduced and merged charges to a total of eight years in prison.
But Trumbull County’s Eleventh District Court of Appeals reversed that judgment and wiped the convictions, ruling much of the evidence submitted by special prosecutors from the state Attorney General’s office was “prejudicial,” as it pertained to other cases in which Bernard was suspected of having a similar role, according to an opinion filed Monday in Ashtabula County.
“You don’t want to punish people for bad things they’ve done in the past,” said Bernard’s attorney, Michael Hiener of Jefferson, referencing a law that allows trial evidence to show similarities in a defendant’s past criminal behavior but forbids it from being used to infer guilt in a different case, which was the crux of the appellate court’s opinion.
“It can be a fine line between the two ideas. You’ve got to be careful you’re not using it to show the person’s done bad things and they should be viewed as a bad person,” he said.
According to trial testimony on the burglary on Jan. 26, 2014 in Conneaut, two “masked African-American men with handguns” invaded a Highland Place apartment in late January 2014 while a woman who lived there with her young son and two other victims were away. When the victims returned home, the suspects were waiting in the dark.
“(One) victim walked to the bedroom and was hit on the head several times by one of the two assailants . ... She passed out,” reads testimony cited in the opinion. “When (she) awoke, she had been tied up with belts and the men were gone. Her phone and car keys were missing. (The other victims) were also injured.”
Investigators suspected Bernard was the one who drove the men away from the apartment complex that night. Bernard’s DNA was found on a cigarette butt and napkin found near some nondescript tire tracks in the area — but that DNA was the only trial evidence directly linked to Bernard.
The day after the robbery, Marcus Lashley and Taquan Mathers, both of Ashtabula, shot and killed Lydia Colon Aviles and her son Alexis Mook Colon in their home along Norman Avenue in Ashtabula, in what prosecutors said was a drug robbery gone wrong. Both Lashley and Mathers implicated Bernard as their getaway driver, according to the opinion.
In that case, police were searching for a silver SUV they believed to have been driven by Bernard, and knew Bernard’s mother owned a vehicle that fit the description. However, that vehicle was not searched and state prosecutors couldn’t confirm Bernard actually drove it, the appellate court noted.
Lashley was indicted but ultimately acquitted in the 2014 Conneaut robbery, but was convicted and sentenced for the Norman Avenue slayings in January 2016, to 60 years to life. Mathers was sentenced to 20 years the following March.
Bernard had also been indicted in November 2013 for complicity to another double homicide along Hiawatha Avenue in Ashtabula. In April 2015, she admitted to driving Edward Smith to and from the scene and agreed to plead guilty to one reduced charge of obstructing justice.
Bernard was sentenced to two years. Smith was sentenced to 33 years to life.
State prosecutors improperly drew from those aforementioned cases when convicting Bernard of her role in the Conneaut burglary, the appellate court ruled.