The Supreme Court of Ohio today reinstated the conviction of a man who murdered his mother in her Cincinnati apartment, finding that any errors made by the trial court in admitting statements and evidence were harmless.

In a unanimous decision, the Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Elijah Blaine Roberts for the 2019 slaying of Tracey Epperson. The Court reversed a ruling by the First District Court of Appeals, which vacated Roberts’s convictions and ordered a new trial because some of the evidence presented during his trial should have been excluded.

Writing for the Court, Chief Justice Sharon L. Kennedy stated that when the evidence the First District believed was improper is removed from consideration, Roberts’s convictions were still supported by sufficient evidence.

“Based on our review of the record after excising the evidence that the appellate court found was prejudicial and erroneously admitted by the trial court, we concluded that the remaining evidence overwhelmingly proves Roberts’s guilt of aggravated murder and aggravated robbery beyond a reasonable doubt,” Chief Justice Kennedy wrote.

Justices R. Patrick DeWine, Jennifer Brunner, Joseph T. Deters, Daniel R. Hawkins, and Megan E. Shanahan joined Chief Justice Kennedy’s opinion. Ninth District Court of Appeals Judge Donna J. Carr, sitting for Justice Patrick F. Fischer, also joined the opinion.

Son Located in Indiana Within Hours of Mother’s Death
On the afternoon of July 31, 2019, Epperson entered her apartment, wearing a long-strapped white purse across her body and carrying groceries she had recently purchased from Kroger. She was also carrying food from a Jimmy John’s, which was in a bag tucked inside a Kroger grocery bag. As she entered her apartment, she was violently attacked and strangled to death with the strap of her purse. Her body was discovered by police the following day lying a few feet from the entrance face down with a Kroger plastic bag over her head, while groceries were scattered on the floor, and a nearby chair was broken.

Roberts, Epperson’s son, had been living with his aunt, Regina Williams, in Augusta, Georgia. On July 29, Williams saw Roberts drive off in her Honda SUV without her permission. Williams called Epperson and told her what happened. Epperson was very concerned, and they kept in contact throughout July 29 and 30 as they tried to locate Roberts. Williams suggested that Epperson track the cellphone that she had given to her son. The two were unable to contact him.

Shortly after 7 p.m. on July 31—the day Epperson died—Deputy Whitney Lushin of the Tipton County, Indiana, Sheriff’s Department noticed a Honda CR-V pulled over to the side of State Road 28. Equipped with his body-worn camera, Lushin approached the driver, who initially identified himself as Eli B. Blaine and stated he was 19 years old. Roberts eventually gave Lushin his full name and admitted he was 21.

Lushin asked who owned the Honda Roberts was driving, and Roberts said it was his mother’s and that he had permission to use it. Roberts told Lushin his mother’s name and said she lived in Cincinnati. The interaction to that point had been recorded before the 15:59 minute mark of Lushin’s bodycam video.

Questioning Raised Concerns of Mother’s Well-Being
Roberts permitted Lushin to retrieve his cellphone from the car, and Lushin noticed a woman’s wallet in the console of the vehicle. Roberts explained that it was his mother’s wallet, that she had been in a hurry to unload groceries, and that he had not realized it was there until it was “too late.” Lushin asked Roberts to call his mother from his cellphone; Roberts then lied, stating that Epperson was his stepmother. Lushin decided to use Roberts’s cellphone to call Epperson but noticed that Roberts did not have her number stored in his phone. Roberts replied that he had just reset it.

Lushin left a voicemail for Epperson and asked a Tipton County dispatcher to call as many times as possible to reach her. Roberts had told Lushin he was on his way to Wisconsin to “check it out,” and Lushin told Roberts it was odd that his mother would let him take her car to Wisconsin but leave her wallet in the console. Lushin would later note that Tipton County is approximately a two-and-a-half-hour drive from Cincinnati and that one would not usually go through it driving from Cincinnati to Wisconsin.

After another officer arrived, the two searched the car and retrieved the wallet. In it, they found a Kroger receipt with a 2:18 p.m. timestamp from that afternoon. They also located Epperson’s driver’s license, credit cards, and some cash. Lushin then asked the dispatcher to contact the Cincinnati Police Department to do a welfare check on Epperson. Roberts was arrested for providing false information.

Police Discover Body
The dispatcher called the Cincinnati police and reported that she had attempted to contact Epperson 11 times and that a deputy had found a driver in possession of her car, wallet, license, and credit cards. Officers initially arrived at Epperson’s apartment around 9 p.m. on July 31, but no one answered the door when they knocked. Their supervisor told them they did not have authority to enter the apartment, so they left.

The next morning, Aug. 1, Epperson’s daughter learned that Epperson had not shown up for work, which was unusual. The daughter called Cincinnati police, seeking a welfare check. Officers arrived that afternoon and saw that the apartment door was cracked opened slightly. They went in and discovered Epperson’s body. Crime scene investigators documented the scene and collected evidence, including materials to gather DNA samples.

During the investigation, Cincinnati detectives learned that Roberts had taken his aunt’s SUV. The vehicle was found on Aug. 1 in a parking lot adjacent to Epperson’s apartment building. Williams had reported her SUV stolen the night Roberts left and then called police again when she noticed that the curtains in her dining room were smoldering.

When Williams’s SUV was searched, police found a debit card in it bearing the name Elijah Roberts on it. They also found a suitcase in the back seat with Roberts’s personal items, including a pair of pants with a receipt in the pocket from a South Carolina store stamped at 7:24 on July 30. In the car was also a gas station receipt from North Carolina, time-stamped at 9:25 a.m.  In the center console was a receipt from a McDonald's that was less than two miles from Epperson’s apartment in Cincinnati. The receipt was time-stamped at 9:52 p.m. July 30.

Police used the receipts to document Roberts’s whereabouts from the time his aunt’s car was stolen until the estimated time of Epperson’s death. Using the Kroger receipt found in the CR-V that Roberts was driving in Indiana, police obtained a Kroger store video showing Epperson checking out at 2:18 p.m. on July 30 and placing the receipt in her wallet, which she put inside the same white purse that investigators discovered at the crime scene. A Jimmy John’s receipt found in the bag discovered near Epperson indicated that she had purchased a sandwich and chips at 2:31 p.m. at a location near the Kroger.

Suspect Sought To Suppress Evidence
Roberts was indicted on two counts of aggravated murder, one count of aggravated robbery, one count of tampering with evidence, and one count of receiving stolen property.

Before his trial, Roberts sought to suppress statements recorded by Lushin’s bodycam. The trial court agreed to exclude statements made after the 43:49 minute mark, finding that that was the point when Roberts was in custody. The trial court rejected Roberts’s request to exclude parts of his aunt’s testimony, including her discovery of the smoldering curtains.

At his trial, several investigators testified, including a forensic scientist from the Hamilton County Coroner’s Crime Laboratory. The scientist testified about the DNA evidence found at the scene. DNA samples showed a partial profile for only Epperson on the bag over her head. The interior doorknob of her apartment had DNA from two contributors, with Epperson being the major contributor, but there was not enough DNA to determine the source of the minor contributor. The interior handle of a sliding door at the back of her apartment revealed that Epperson was the major contributor, but testing could not identify a minor contributor. No DNA positively identifying Roberts was found in the samples.

The jury found Roberts guilty of all the counts except receiving stolen property; that charge was decided by the trial judge, who found Roberts guilty of it.  The trial court imposed a life sentence with parole eligibility after 25 years.

Roberts appealed to the First District, which held that he was in police custody at the 15:59 minute mark of Lushin’s bodycam video, and it held that the trial court erred in admitting statements Roberts made after that time. The appellate court also determined that it was an error to admit Robert’s aunt’s testimony that Roberts stole her Honda Pilot and that she observed her dining-room curtains smoldering around the time of Roberts’s departure. The First District decided that the errors were not harmless and ordered Roberts to be retried on the murder and robbery counts.  The court determined that there was insufficient evidence to convict Roberts of tampering with evidence.

The state appealed to the Supreme Court.

Supreme Court Analyzed Trial Record
Chief Justice Kennedy noted the state’s claim that the errors made by the trial court were harmless and that Roberts was not entitled to a new trial. She explained that the government bears the burden of demonstrating that the trial court’s errors did not affect the outcome of Roberts’s trial, so that if the government failed to meet this burden, his convictions must be reversed.

The opinion stated that the error in improperly admitting evidence could be deemed harmless if the remaining evidence provided overwhelming proof of Roberts’s guilt.

The Court recognized that the prosecution relied primarily on circumstantial evidence, as Roberts did not confess to the crime and there were no eyewitnesses. The Court stated that to determine whether Roberts killed his mother with prior calculation and design, it would have to consider such factors as whether he gave thought to choosing the murder weapon and site and whether the act was drawn out or an “almost instantaneous eruption of events.”

The Court pointed out that the receipts showed Roberts traveling from Georgia to Cincinnati in his aunt’s stolen SUV shortly before the murder. The McDonald's receipt showed that Roberts was in Cincinnati, near his mother’s apartment, the night before the murder.  The vehicle Roberts drove from Georgia was parked next to Epperson’s apartment on the day of the murder.  His aunt and mother had been trying to locate him, but he did not respond to their inquiries, indicating he did not let his mother know he was in Cincinnati.

The evidence suggested that Roberts either walked into his mother’s apartment with her as she carried the groceries or let himself into the apartment and attacked Epperson when she walked in. The investigation also indicated that the killer used the straps from the purse to murder Epperson. A physician testified that Epperson died from strangulation, and it would have taken minutes to kill her.

Chief Justice Kennedy explained that the First District erred when it ruled that if Roberts’s statements after the 15:59 minute mark on the bodycam and his aunt’s testimony had been excluded, there would not be overwhelming evidence of Roberts’s guilt. The appeals court also mistakenly focused on the presence of DNA evidence at the scene that was not Roberts’s, the failure to test Epperson’s fingernail clippings, and the familial relationship between Roberts and his mother. 

The Supreme Court noted that the investigation did not exclude Roberts as a contributor of DNA but only found the other DNA samples were “too small to test,” so that anyone, including Roberts, could have been the minor contributor. It did not matter that Epperson’s fingernail clippings were not tested for DNA given the other evidence of guilt, and it would be unreasonable to infer that Roberts received permission to take Epperson’s wallet, keys, and car immediately before he attacked her and strangled her to death in the entryway of her apartment, the opinion stated.

The Court concluded that “the First District erred in reversing Roberts’s convictions for aggravated murder and aggravated robbery because after excising the evidence that the court of appeals determined had been improperly admitted, we find that the remaining evidence overwhelmingly proves Roberts’s guilt.  Therefore, any error in the trial court’s admitting [Roberts’s] statements and other-. . . evidence was harmless beyond a reasonable doubt,” the Court stated.

2024-0854. State v. Roberts, Slip Opinion No. 2025-Ohio-5120.

View oral argument video of this case.

Please note: Opinion summaries are prepared by the Office of Public Information for the general public and news media. Opinion summaries are not prepared for every opinion, but only for noteworthy cases. Opinion summaries are not to be considered as official headnotes or syllabi of court opinions. The full text of this and other court opinions are available online.