A Franklin County jury on Tuesday, November 10, found Pammy Maye, 51, of Columbus guilty on all counts in the death of 5-year-old Darnell Taylor, a boy who had been in the foster custody of Maye and her husband, The Columbus Dispatch reported. The verdict included aggravated murder, three counts of tampering with evidence and gross abuse of a corpse, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The case dates to February 14, 2024. Maye’s defense attorney, Sam Shamansky, did not dispute during the two-day trial that Maye killed Taylor that day, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Prosecutors told the jury the boy died of suffocation in the couple’s Columbus home.
Franklin County Assistant Prosecuting Attorney Katherine Wolfe argued in closing that the killing was premeditated, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Wolfe told jurors Maye waited until her husband had left for work that morning and that Maye herself told detectives she had planned what happened, according to The Columbus Dispatch.
The defense asked jurors to find Maye not guilty by reason of mental disorder. Shamansky told the court, in a quote reported by The Columbus Dispatch, that the verdict form itself did not fit the case, saying it should be ‘guilty, but insane.’ He argued Maye was severely mentally ill and did not understand at the time that her actions were wrong.
Dr. Daniel Davis, who performed a forensic psychological evaluation of Maye and testified at trial, described a history of depression and bipolar disorder, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Prosecutors countered, according to The Columbus Dispatch, that Davis also said Maye overreported symptoms during the evaluation and that there was evidence of fabricated symptoms.
After the boy’s death, prosecutors described a series of steps Maye took to hide what had happened, including hiding the body first in the home and later in a storm sewer that evening, The Columbus Dispatch reported. Those actions underpinned the tampering-with-evidence and abuse-of-a-corpse counts on which the jury also convicted her.
Brooklyn, Ohio, police arrested Maye on February 15, 2024, and she gave a detailed confession to Columbus police detectives in a Brooklyn hospital room, The Columbus Dispatch reported. That confession became a central piece of the prosecution’s case at trial.
In July, Maye declined a plea offer that would have required her to plead guilty to aggravated murder and abuse of a corpse, with a possible sentence of life in prison without parole or with parole eligibility after 20, 25 or 30 years, The Columbus Dispatch reported. By rejecting the offer, she took the case to a jury instead.
What we know — and what we’re still waiting on
What is confirmed is the verdict itself: guilty on all counts after several hours of deliberation on November 10, as reported by The Columbus Dispatch. What is not yet known is the sentence. The Dispatch reported Maye will be sentenced at a later date, and no sentencing date was announced in its coverage of the verdict.
For Columbus families who followed the case since February 2024, the verdict closes the trial phase of a case that raised painful questions about how a child in foster custody could die in the home charged with protecting him. Those broader system questions were not decided by this jury, whose task was Maye’s criminal responsibility alone.
The foster-care context is part of why the case drew sustained attention in Franklin County. Darnell had been placed in the Mayes’ home, and his death prompted scrutiny of how placements are monitored — scrutiny that played out in public discussion while the criminal case moved slowly through the courts for more than two and a half years between the February 2024 death and the November 2026 trial.
The two-day length of the trial itself reflected how much was not in dispute. With the defense conceding the act and contesting only Maye’s mental state at the time, jurors were asked to weigh expert testimony about her diagnoses against the prosecution’s account of planning and concealment, and they resolved that question in the prosecution’s favor on every count.
What happens next is sentencing in Franklin County. A judge will set that hearing, hear arguments from prosecutors and the defense, and impose a sentence under Ohio law for aggravated murder and the accompanying counts. NewsForce247 will update this story when a sentencing date is set.
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