Background
Mark Wade was convicted by a Cuyahoga County jury in June 2025 of murdering his girlfriend Angela Carner, along with felonious assault, domestic violence, and tampering with evidence. He was sentenced to 21 years to life in prison. Wade maintained throughout that he acted in self-defense: he testified that Carner woke him at 3:30 a.m. brandishing a gun and then a large knife, that he wrestled the gun away from her, and that he shot her only after she continued advancing on him with the knife even after being struck by two initial rounds.
The prosecution countered with substantial evidence undermining Wade’s account. Forensic evidence showed Carner suffered 11 gunshot wounds, six of which entered through her back. No gun or knife was recovered — Wade admitted he returned the knife to the kitchen and dismantled and discarded the firearm. Officers found no signs of a struggle in the cluttered living room. Wade did not call 911 after the shooting, lied to Carner’s family, coworkers, and police about her whereabouts, hid her cellphone at her worksite, and purchased a large garbage can the day after her death. Prior text messages showed Wade had made threats against Carner, and a 2024 assault case had been filed against him in connection with a prior incident involving her.
The State also introduced testimony from Carner’s longtime friend Diana Tellis, who stated that Carner had told her during their Las Vegas trip — the weekend before the shooting — that she planned to leave Wade. Wade objected to this testimony on hearsay and Confrontation Clause grounds. He also challenged the trial court’s refusal to define “residence” and “dwelling” in the self-defense jury instructions, arguing those definitions were necessary to establish he had no duty to retreat.
The Court’s Holding
The Eighth District affirmed all convictions on each of the three assignments of error. On the hearsay issue, the court held that Carner’s statements to Tellis about her intent to leave Wade were admissible under Ohio Evidence Rule 803(3), the then-existing state of mind exception, consistent with binding Ohio Supreme Court precedent permitting such statements by unavailable declarants. The court also held that because the statements were made between close friends during a private vacation — not under circumstances that would lead an objective witness to believe they would be used at trial — they were nontestimonial, and therefore the Confrontation Clause was not implicated under Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).
On the jury instruction issue, the court found no abuse of discretion in the trial court’s refusal to define “residence” or “dwelling.” Because it was entirely undisputed that the altercation occurred in the shared home of Wade and Carner, the question of whether the location qualified as a residence — relevant to the no-duty-to-retreat element of self-defense — was simply not a contested issue, making those definitions immaterial.
On manifest weight, the court found that the jury reasonably rejected Wade’s self-defense claim. It pointed to Wade’s failure to call 911, his active efforts to conceal Carner’s death (including lying to police and family, hiding her phone, and purchasing a garbage can), his destruction of the alleged weapons, and the forensic evidence showing six shots entered Carner’s back — all of which the jury could weigh against the credibility of his self-defense narrative. The State needed only to disprove one element of self-defense beyond a reasonable doubt, and the court found ample evidence to support the jury’s verdict.
Key Takeaways
- Under Ohio Evid.R. 803(3), a homicide victim’s statement of intent to leave a relationship is admissible as a then-existing state of mind exception to hearsay, even when the declarant is unavailable — a rule the Ohio Supreme Court has applied consistently and the Eighth District reaffirmed here.
- Statements made between friends in a private, informal setting (such as a vacation conversation) are nontestimonial under Crawford v. Washington and do not trigger Confrontation Clause protections, regardless of their ultimate use at trial.
- Trial courts need not instruct juries on legal definitions that are undisputed on the facts; where no party contests that a shooting occurred in the defendant’s residence, defining “residence” or “dwelling” for the no-duty-to-retreat element is immaterial and its omission is not an abuse of discretion.
- Post-crime conduct — concealing the body, destroying weapons, lying to investigators — is highly probative against a self-defense claim and can support a manifest weight finding even where the defendant offers a facially plausible account of the incident.
Why It Matters
This decision reinforces the practical breadth of the state-of-mind hearsay exception in domestic violence homicide cases, where the victim’s own words about a relationship — shared privately with a friend — can come in at trial without implicating the Confrontation Clause. Prosecutors handling intimate-partner homicides can draw on this case when seeking to admit statements the decedent made about plans to leave, so long as those statements reflect the declarant’s then-existing intent rather than a recounting of past facts or reasons.
The case also illustrates how post-incident behavior can be decisive in self-defense cases. Wade’s failure to seek help, his active concealment of the crime, and his destruction of the very evidence that would have corroborated his story provided the jury with substantial grounds to disbelieve him — underscoring that jurors in self-defense cases scrutinize not just the moment of the alleged threat, but everything a defendant did afterward.