LISBON — The judge who sentenced Elvin EJ Tisdale to prison for the rest of his life for killing Brycen Douglas in 2021 said no to his requests for a new trial and acquittal.

Tisdale’s trial defense attorneys Paul Conn and Coleen Hall Dailey filed motions for acquittal and a new trial in Columbiana County Common Pleas Court last month, making claims that the prosecution misled jurors, was permitted to use hearsay testimony and that the court erred by not suppressing the use of out-of-state warrants for a telephone.

“The motions were not timely filed and are denied,” Common Pleas Court Judge Megan Bickerton wrote.

A jury found Tisdale guilty in June on all counts — aggravated murder and murder, both unclassified felonies, both with findings for use of a firearm, and third-degree felony having weapons while under disability. Bickerton followed the sentencing recommendation of county Assistant Prosecutor Steve Yacovone, who tried the case along with county Assistant Prosecutors Tammie Riley Jones and Christopher Weeda.

The two murder charges merged for sentencing, with Yacovone requesting the sentence be based on the more serious aggravated murder charge and recommending life without the possibility of parole, which was the sentence Tisdale received from Bickerton for the aggravated murder.

She sentenced him to an additional mandatory three years for the firearm specification and an additional 36 months or three years for the having weapons under disability charge related to being prohibited from having or using a gun due to a previous felony conviction for drugs. For a separate drug case, she also sentenced him to 10 months in prison for a 2024 fifth-degree felony charge of aggravated possession of drugs. He pleaded guilty to the drug charge earlier this year. He was accused of possessing methamphetamine on Aug. 2, 2023 while he was an inmate at the county jail for the then pending murder case.

Douglas was just 20 years old at the time of his death and was sitting on a porch with some friends in East Liverpool’s east end when Tisdale and another shooter walked behind and between two houses across the street and opened fire on the porch, hitting Douglas.

A day after Tisdale’s trial defense attorneys filed the motions, they filed a notice of appeal with the Seventh District Court of Appeals in Youngstown to challenge his conviction and sentence.

The appeal remains pending, with the appellate court assigning attorney Martin Hume to serve as Tisdale’s appellate counsel.

mgreier@mojonews.com