Hillsboro man found guilty of involuntary manslaughter, other charges

On Tuesday morning, a jury seated in Highland County Common Pleas Court convicted a Hillsboro man of five counts related to the death of his 10-year-old grandchild, including two first-degree felony charges of involuntary manslaughter.

As previously reported, John Powell, 55, was indicted by a Highland County grand jury in July and charged with five counts, including two counts of involuntary manslaughter, a first-degree felony; corrupting another with drugs, a second-degree felony; endangering children, a third-degree felony; and tampering with evidence, a third-degree felony. The involuntary manslaughter charges corresponded to two other counts in the indictment, as Powell was accused of “causing the death of” a victim “as a proximate result of … knowingly committing or attempting to commit” two felonies: corrupting another with drugs and endangering children.  

Following a jury trial that began Monday and concluded Tuesday morning with jury instructions and closing arguments, it took the jury of seven women and five men a little over an hour to return guilty verdicts on all five counts. The jury received the case at 9:45 a.m., and by 11:15 a.m., court was back on the record with Highland County Clerk of Courts Ike Hodson reading the verdicts.

At defense attorney Patrick Mulligan’s request, Hodson also polled the jury on each of the five counts, with the jurors confirming that they had reached a guilty verdict on every charge.

Powell, who was emotional during much of the trial, remained stoic as the verdicts were read and as Highland County Common Pleas Court Judge Rocky Coss ordered him to be remanded into the custody of the Highland County Sheriff’s Office. Some of the spectators, who filled the courtroom for two days of difficult, often heartbreaking testimony, cried as the verdicts were read and in the moments after court adjourned Tuesday morning. Highland County Prosecutor Anneka Collins hugged the victim’s family after the judge left the courtroom Tuesday.

Powell has not yet been sentenced, with Coss ordering a presentence investigation and scheduling a hearing for Dec. 2 at 1 p.m.

The trial began Monday morning at approximately 10:30 a.m. with initial instructions to the jury in front of the aforementioned courtroom packed with spectators.

In her opening statement, Collins outlined the facts as alleged in this case. According to Collins, family and friends gathered at Powell’s home on Dec. 23, 2023 to celebrate Christmas. The victim and the victim’s siblings eventually spent the night as their parents returned home.

The victim, who was 10, was “coughing and congested,” and Powell gave the child medicine  in bed. After realizing the child did not come out of the bedroom the following morning, Powell and his wife found the victim “covered in fluid and blood and not breathing” in the bed.

Collins alleged that during the morning of Dec. 24, Powell took liquid morphine out of his kitchen cabinet and hid it in the garage. When detectives from the Highland County Sheriff’s Office arrived on scene, Collins said that Powell “left out the fact that he hid the morphine in the garage” and claimed that he had given the victim a generic pain reliever the previous night. After attending the victim’s funeral, Powell threw the bottle of morphine in a gas station trash can in Brown County, Collins said.

According to Collins, the HCSO received a coroner’s report and toxicology report from the Montgomery County Coroner’s Office in February 2024, where the victim’s cause of death was determined to be “morphine intoxication,” or that the victim “overdosed on morphine,” Collins said.

According to Collins, HCSO Detective Lieutenant Vincent Antinore interviewed Powell, who “repeatedly” said there was “no morphine in the house” and permitted Antinore to look through the medication in his home.

During the course of his investigation, Antinore found out that Powell’s mother was in a nursing home and that Powell had “cleaned out” her medication supply, which included morphine.

In March, Antinore conducted a third interview with Powell, where Collins said Powell “changed his story” and “finally admitted there was liquid morphine in the house” last December.

Collins told the jury that although the defense would likely portray this as a “sad accident,” she called attention to the “reckless and knowing behavior that caused the death” of the victim as well as the “immediate actions” that Powell took upon finding the victim deceased — where she alleged he “immediately goes and hides morphine and lies about it repeatedly.

“Those are not the actions of someone who doesn’t know what they did,” Collins told the jury. “Those are the actions of someone who was guilty, knows exactly what they did and is trying to cover up their crimes.”

In his opening statement, Mulligan began by explaining the five counts in the indictment.

“John previously pled not guilty to these charges and stands on that plea today, very firmly on that,” Mulligan told the jury. “The facts are not going to contain a shred of evidence to prove that John intended or had purpose to kill [the victim].”
 
Mulligan added “the facts are going to show the opposite” because Powell “loved” the victim, saying the children in his family “are his world.”

Mulligan also explained the events of Dec. 23 from the defense’s perspective. He said the victim was ill that day with “a significant cough” and “a lot of wheezing,” and Powell gave the child “a small amount of what he believed was cough syrup” late that night.

The state presented a total of eight witnesses throughout the trial Monday, beginning with the father of the victim. The father spoke about the events of Dec. 23, with the holiday celebration at Powell’s home, then receiving a call the following morning from Powell saying the victim “is not breathing.”

The father said he and his wife, the victim’s mother, rushed over to Powell’s house, which is approximately 40 minutes away, where they found their child deceased and numerous first responders on the scene.

A funeral was held the following Saturday, the father said, and he testified that he felt that Powell and his wife “were trying to convince us [their child] looked sick.”  He said that Powell and his wife “wouldn’t let us pay for things,” which is “unlike him,” and wanted the victim’s parents to “come over to burn the mattress” their child had died on.

The father also said that Powell called him in February when the autopsy and toxicology report came out and “insisted he didn’t give [the victim] anything,” and “to this day I haven’t heard different.” During the same week that they found out how their child died, the father said his wife had to undergo a medical procedure. Powell “was mad” that they went out to dinner first “and didn’t invite” Powell and his wife and proceeded to “call me over 20 times,” the father said.

The father said that he spoke to Antinore about morphine and allowed him to search their home, while he also told Antinore about his grandmother having prescription medicine and Powell “cleaning her house out.”

The second witness was a sibling of the victim, who also testified about the events of Dec. 23-24. The child testified about seeing Powell “run into the garage and back into the guest bedroom” the morning Powell and his wife found the victim dead.

The third witness was Doug Streeter, a firefighter and paramedic who works for Paint Creek Joint EMS/Fire District and volunteers for the Southern Highland Joint Fire District. Streeter testified that it took 13 minutes from the time of the 911 call to his arrival on scene, where he found the victim unresponsive in a bedroom. He said that Powell met him at the door “crying and asking for help” and that no one was performing CPR on the victim upon his arrival.

Streeter testified that he did not attempt CPR or any lifesaving measures because the victim was “obviously deceased,” long enough that “rigor set in.”

Next, Dr. Travis Bledsoe, a pharmacist, reviewed an OARRS (Ohio Automated Rx Reporting System) report for controlled substances for
Powell’s mother. He confirmed that a prescription for morphine sulfate, a liquid, was filled in February 2023, and that the pharmacy “would have used an amber liquid bottle, two ounces in size,” for that particular prescription. Under cross examination, Dr. Bledsoe said that is the only container that would have been used for that medication, as it “would be the same container but a different size” if that bottle was not available for some reason.

The fifth witness was an aunt of the victim, who testified that she and her husband drove to Powell’s home after being told that the victim had passed away. She said that the victim was on a gurney when they arrived and that she watched Powell throw “himself over the gurney and said it was all his fault.” The aunt said Powell “shook the gurney so hard he almost knocked [the victim’s body] off” of it and repeated, “It’s all my fault.”

After a recess, proceedings resumed Monday at 1 p.m. with forensic pathologist and Montgomery County Deputy Coroner Dr. Susan Brown testifying. Dr. Brown was declared an expert witness in forensic pathology.

According to Dr. Brown, the autopsy and toxicology report found “morphine intoxication” to be the cause of the victim’s death.

Dr. Brown explained the autopsy process, and several exhibits were shown with photos documenting the autopsy on the victim. Dr. Brown testified that there were no “signs of injury or natural diseases” on the outside of the victim’s body but that a viral panel showed that the victim had viruses consistent with the common cold.

Collins asked why the toxicology screening was important, and Dr. Brown said it was “to see if drugs played a role” in the victim’s death. In response to another question from Collins, Dr. Brown said that morphine was a “significant finding,” and Collins asked her why.

“A couple of reasons,” Dr. Brown said. “To my knowledge, [the victim] should not have had any morphine in [the victim’s] system. No one had reported to me that morphine had been prescribed.

“The other reason is that it was a large amount.”

Collins then asked Dr. Brown to explain the effect morphine can have on the body. Dr. Brown said it is prescribed “to alleviate pain,” but morphine can have “adverse effects,” including pulmonary edema, which she found in the victim.

In response to more questioning from Collins, Dr. Brown testified that pulmonary edema is “fluid that is filling up in the lungs, making the lungs heavy and difficult to breathe,” and that “frothy fluid,” which was present, “can be a sign of an opiate.”

Collins asked if that is what caused the death of the victim.

“Yes,” Dr. Brown said. “[The victim] isn’t going to be able to breathe on [the victim’s] own anymore, and then [the victim’s] heart would stop.”

Under cross examination, Dr. Brown said that morphine was found in the heart blood, peripheral blood and vitreous (eye) fluid tested. She agreed that a “small amount” of morphine could “have a powerful effect” on a child. Under redirect examination, Dr. Brown added that in addition to a person’s age, their weight and “experience” with taking such a drug would also have a bearing on their reaction.

The state’s final two witnesses were the investigating officers, beginning with Detective Erica Engle.

Engle reviewed photos from the house presented as exhibits by Collins, as the photos depicted blood and fluid stains in the bedroom where the victim was found. She also testified that she asked Powell for the bottle of medication he gave the victim, and Powell provided her “a bottle of pink” generic pain reliever from a windowsill in the kitchen.

The state’s final witness was Antinore, who also testified about his investigation that began at the scene on the morning the victim was found and continued in the months that followed.

According to Antinore, Powell told him that he had given the victim “cough medicine” Dec. 23 between 10 and 11 p.m., and that Powell’s wife went to check on the victim after realizing all of the children except the victim had gotten up. Powell advised that he started CPR while his wife called 911.

Upon receiving the coroner’s report around Feb. 13, Antinore said his investigation turned from an “unknown deceased 10-year-old to someone causing the death of a 10-year-old,” as he turned his attention to determining who administered morphine to the victim.

Antinore said he interviewed Powell again, at Powell’s home, and told him that the coroner’s report revealed they found morphine “but didn’t tell him it was the cause of death.” He said Powell “said he was surprised,” told Antinore that they didn’t have morphine and permitted Antinore to search the home.

Antinore said he then interviewed the victim’s parents, who told him about Powell’s mother having morphine and that Powell “had cleaned out her prescriptions.” Antinore obtained a copy of the OARRS report that confirmed Powell’s mother had been prescribed morphine.

Antinore then conducted another interview of Powell, this time at the Highland County Sheriff’s Office, around March 19. He said that during the course of the interview, Powell “admitted to lying and to hiding the morphine in the garage.” Antinore testified that he asked Powell where the morphine was, and he said Powell told him he disposed of it in another county the day of the victim’s funeral, “hoping it would never be found.”

Collins asked if Antinore told Powell the victim’s cause of death. “I did,” Antinore said.

Antinore testified that he asked Powell if he knew what killed the victim, and Powell said “they told me pneumonia.

“I said no, it was a drug overdose,” Antinore said. “He said, ‘really.’ I said, ‘yes, morphine.’ He replied, ‘But I only gave [the victim] just a little bit.’”

Collins asked how many times Powell cried during his interviews.

“He didn’t cry at any point,” Antinore said.

Collins then asked, “How many times did he lie?”

“More than I can count,” Antinore said.

Under cross examination, Antinore reiterated that he did not recall Powell crying, despite multiple attempts by Mulligan to play clips of the interview to prove otherwise.

The state rested at approximately 2:10 p.m., with Powell taking the stand in his own defense just after 2:30 p.m.

Powell testified that his mother was under hospice home care due to a number of health problems before being placed in a care facility. He said that because she was frequently at Powell’s house, they kept some of her medication there, but he believed he had disposed of all of the medicine after his mother began living in a care facility.

Regarding the events of Dec. 23, Powell testified that he gotten up around 6 a.m., with the large family party going “into the evening hours,” then driving a guest home to Blanchester. By the time he arrived home after 10 p.m., he said he was “wore out” from a “long day.”

The victim, who traveled with Powell to Blanchester that night to take the other guest home, “didn’t feel good,” Powell said. He testified the victim had “real raspy breathing” was “coughing really bad” and “fell asleep twice,” which was unusual. The victim wanted to go to bed when they got home, and Powell said he told his wife he needed to give the victim some cough medicine.

Powell testified that he took the medicine to the victim in bed, that he had poured in a medicine cup and that it “wasn’t even a full dose of cough medicine, it was less than five milliliters.”

Mulligan asked, “Did you know it was going to contribute to [the victim’s] death?”

Powell replied, “Absolutely not,” and started to cry.

Powell added that he and the victim were “really close.” He again cried when Mulligan asked him if he knew a mistake had been made and when Powell described him and his wife finding the victim the following morning.

Powell testified that he had heard the victim breathing “early in the morning” and that upon finding the victim unresponsive, Powell and his wife “switched back and forth performing CPR” for half an hour. He testified he had “no idea” what he had given the victim until “much later” when he found the morphine bottle. Powell added that he made the realization “the same day” the victim died.

Mulligan asked Powell what he did with the morphine bottle, and Powell said he put it in his garage.
 
“I was scared to death,” Powell said. “I didn’t want to upset my kids. I was just scared.”

When asked by Mulligan if he was “concerned about other people’s reactions,” Powell said, “Everybody’s.”

Powell then testified that he thought he had given the victim “a prescription cough medicine, an antibiotic cough medicine,” and that he “would never give my kids anything that would hurt them.”

Under cross examination, Collins asked Powell to give “yes or no answers” to her questions. He first said that the victim was “warm” when asked if the child had been running a fever, then  acknowledged that he thought he had given the victim “a cough suppressant” and not the pain reliever/fever reducer he provided Engle.

Collins asked Powell what the correct dosage for the victim would be, and Powell said he “thinks” it’s 10 milliliters. He agreed that to find out for sure, one would read the label.

“You lied to law enforcement about what you gave [the victim], didn’t you?” Collins asked.

“Yes, I did,” Powell said.

“You lied to your son?” Collins asked.

“Yes, I did,” Powell said.

However, Powell denied hiding the morphine bottle before performing CPR on the victim. Collins pointed out that Powell testified that he and his wife had performed “CPR for 30 minutes” (“Yes, ma’am, I did,” Powell said), but that no one was performing CPR when EMTs arrived 13 minutes after the 911 call was placed.

“So your testimony you performed CPR until they got there and told you to stop is a lie,” Collins said.

“It could have been a little bit different, yes,” Powell said.

Powell again denied hiding the morphine before law enforcement arrived but then acknowledged that he “took it out to the garage” after EMTs had arrived.

Collins asked why Powell would hide the bottle if he “truly believed” he had given the victim either pain reliever or cough medicine.

“I figured I could have gotten in trouble for giving [the victim] a prescription medicine that wasn’t [the victim’s] prescription,” Powell said.

“I mean, it killed [the victim],” Collins said.

“I know that,” Powell said.

Collins then pointed out that Powell sat in court “and cried all day today” but never cried in his interviews with Antinore, which Powell denied. The prosecutor then asked, “You never apologized to [the victim’s] family for this, have you?” Powell said that he “wasn’t allowed to talk to them.”

Collins also asked Powell if he thought it was “reckless” to fill a medicine cup with “I don’t know what” and give it to a child. Powell responded that it wasn’t “reckless because I thought it was cough medicine,” but agreed that it is reckless to “give someone else’s prescription” medication to another person.

Collins asked Powell how many times he spoke about being “tired that night” in his interviews with Antinore, and Powell said he didn’t know. When Collins asked if it was true Powell had “never said it before today,” Powell said, “I don’t know if I was ever asked.”

Collins also asked if Monday was “the first time you’ve told” the story that he thought he had administered a prescription cough medicine. Powell said, “No, it is not.”

Under redirect, Mulligan asked Powell if he was “100-percent convinced, in your mind, you were giving [the victim] cough medicine.”

“Yes, sir,” Powell saiid.

The defense rested at 3:15 p.m., with the jury dismissed Monday at 3:20 p.m. During a conference with attorneys after the trial, Coss determined that the court ordering no contact between Powell and the victim’s parents was not placed until July when Powell was arraigned, a fact that he also brought up to the jury Tuesday morning.

Proceedings resumed Tuesday at 8:15 a.m. with another full courtroom, as the jury received their instructions and heard closing arguments.

Mulligan characterized the case as a “mistake of fact,” arguing that Powell did not “knowingly” cause the death of the victim as defined in the first involuntary manslaughter charge, nor did he “recklessly” do so as alleged in the second count of involuntary manslaughter.

“We are here contesting those first four counts, the counts that resulted in [the victim’s] death,” Mulligan said. “We have pled not guilty, we stand on that plea, and the facts and the defenses that apply to that absolutely show that not guilty should apply to those four counts.”

Mulligan told the jury he sees this “as a one-question case,” and the question for them to determine is: “When did John know?”

“The state has to put on evidence that is so compelling and strong that you would rely on evidence like that to make the most important decision in your life,” Mulligan said. “Would you bet a single paycheck on the single question that we have in this case, did he know before or after [the victim’s] passing?

“If you're not willing to bet a paycheck, you are not even close to ‘beyond a reasonable doubt.’”

Mulligan continued that “there was no expectation whatsoever that that child was going to pass away on Christmas Eve morning” from anyone, including Powell.

“It's only at that point that he recognizes that there was a mistake made back in September and a mistake made the previous evening,” Mulligan said. “The mistake made in September was he thought that he had cleared out grandma's medicine. In fact, that's not true, and we know that's not true because the child died of morphine.”

Mulligan said that Powell had to be “aware at the time it was happening in order to be found guilty, and he had to know at the time that he gave the morphine that it was wrong.

“This is where mistake of fact comes in,” Mulligan said. “Everyone was shocked, including him. Everyone was sad, including him, on Christmas Eve morning. Knowledge afterwards doesn't get you to a guilty finding in this case. It has to be proof of knowledge before, and there's no evidence of that. That's the glaring hole in the case, and it's just glaring, and it's looking at us, and there's still nothing there.”

Although Mulligan asked the jury to return a finding of not guilty on each of the four counts, he did not contest the tampering with evidence charge.

“There's no design or purpose in any of the actions that he took prior to the discovery of [the victim] on that morning, and because there's no purpose, there's no design, there's no intention, there's no knowledge of this, that's why he's not guilty on the involuntary manslaughter counts, the corrupting count and the endangering children count,” Mulligan said. “Strangely, the proof in count five proves he's not guilty in the first four counts, because the activity doesn't start until there's a discovery.

“This was a horrible, life-changing mistake that, honestly, he will have to live with for the rest of his life, regardless of what you do.”

Mulligan concluded that “this case comes down to two errors,” of Powell not disposing of all of his mother’s medicine in September and again in December when he gave the child the morphine.

“The state has to prove that he knew these errors before [the victim] passed away, and there’s no evidence of that,” Mulligan said. “Inconsistent statements that he made to the detective, characterized as lies — those don't equal knowledge beforehand. In fact, the only thing that they show is that he was scared and concerned about what other people thought.”

Collins recapped the facts as alleged and brought out through testimony in the trial in her first argument, while in her final closing argument, she refuted some of Mulligan’s statements and reviewed all of the witness testimony heard Monday. That included Antinore’s portrayal of “the ever-changing story of the defendant,” Collins told the jury.

“What all of the state's witnesses have in common is that they have no interest or bias. In other words, they have nothing to gain or lose by lying to you,” Collins said. “The only person that you heard from with a reason to be dishonest, the only person with something to lose, the only person with a reason to lie, the only person with an interest and bias is the defendant.

“We know this man is an admitted liar. He admitted yesterday on the stand he lied, and we know he lied to Detective Antinore multiple times before he finally admitted that he gave [the victim] morphine. We know he lied to his own son when he said he didn't give [the victim] anything other than acetaminophen. He lied on the stand about the most simple of things, like the EMTs telling him to stop CPR, when, in fact, the defendant wasn’t performing CPR when the EMTs arrived. Yeah, it was pointless to perform CPR, but why are you lying about that?”

Collins added that Powell “put on quite a performance in this courtroom, crying but no tears,” during the trial.

From there, Collins brought out an easel with each of the five charges in the indictment and broke down how the state proved every element of every charge.

While the defense argued that Powell did not act knowingly, Collins said his “actions scream that he knew he gave [the victim] morphine.

“First he hid the morphine, then he lied about that morphine ever being in his home,” she said. “Then when they were carrying [the victim’s] lifeless body out of the house, he screamed that it's his fault.

“Now the defense continuously argues that he didn't know he was giving [the victim] morphine, but it doesn't say he has to know he was giving morphine. The law says he has to know that he was giving [the victim] a controlled substance. You make the additional finding that was morphine, and we know it was morphine because that's what [the victim’s] [toxicology] screen shows.”

Regarding the defense’s argument that Powell did not intend to kill the victim, Collins explained that “it doesn’t matter because he’s not charged with murder.

“Because it was his intention to give [the victim] medicine, and that medicine killed [the victim], he's guilty of voluntary manslaughter,” Collins said.

The prosecutor also disputed the argument that Powell did not act recklessly.

“Anyone administering medication into a child knows: read the label first,” Collins said “Don't just pour in a cup willy nilly and start handing it out. This is reckless behavior. Had he bothered to read the label, he would have realized, but he knew what he knew what he was giving [the victim]. He knew it was morphine. He thought it would help [the victim] sleep through the night. And it wasn't just a little bit, like he says. Remember Dr. Brown's testimony? There was a lot of morphine in [the victim’s] system.

“Even if we were to believe that his latest version, in which he thought he was giving [the victim] prescription cold medicine, there's no question it wasn’t [the victim’s] prescription. No question. In fact, this defendant admitted that giving [the victim] someone else's prescription medication was reckless behavior. He admitted that on the stand yesterday.”

Collins told the jury that Powell “acted with heedless indifference to the consequences of his actions.

“When you provide prescription medication to someone and they aren't supposed to take that, there is a substantial risk that something bad will happen,” Collins said. “Maybe [the victim] was allergic to it, or maybe you give [the victim] too much and he kills [the victim].”

Collins then reviewed all of the evidence in the case again before concluding.

“The absolute, absolute, most telling evidence that this defendant knew exactly what he gave [the victim] on December 23 are his actions upon finding [the victim] dead on December 24,” Collins said. “As soon as [the victim] is found dead, this defendant runs to the kitchen, gathers up the morphine that belongs to [Powell’s mother], morphine he had in this possession illegally, and ran to the garage to hide it.

“If he genuinely thought he gave [the victim] something else, why would that thought even enter his head? If you genuinely believe you pay your electric bill, when the lights go out, your first thought isn’t ‘my gosh, I didn't pay the bill.’ He had to have known it, because it was the first thing he did to cover up the crime. Ran into that cabinet, pulled it out and hid it. Had he not known that he gave [the victim] morphine, the idea that [the victim] had overdosed and died wouldn’t have even entered his mind. He would be thinking [the victim] died because [the victim] was sick. The idea that there was some drug in [the victim’s] system would not have entered his mind.”

Collins told the jury that Powell “knew what he gave [the victim], because he knew exactly what to go get and hide,” and because later he said, “This is my fault.”

Collins asked the jury to “apply your common sense” and find Powell “guilty of all counts.

“He's guilty of giving [the] 10-year-old [victim] morphine, and that morphine killed [the victim],” Collins said. “Remember this: in an emergency situation, a person's first instinct reflects his true knowledge. This defendant's first instinct was to lie and cover up his crimes.”

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