Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack spoke to reporters outside of the Dauphin County Courthouse following the guilty verdict on Wednesday.
Suspended Harrisburg judge Sonya McKnight has been convicted of attempted homicide.
On Wednesday, a jury found McKnight guilty of shooting and attempting to murder her ex-boyfriend Michael McCoy while he slept in his Susquehanna Township home last year.
McKnight was convicted on one count of attempted first-degree murder and one count of aggravated assault, decided after less than two hours of deliberation in the Dauphin County Court of Common Pleas by an out-of-area jury from Delaware County.
McKnight is slated to receive her sentence from the judge on May 28 at 9 a.m.
Sonya McKnight. File photo from 2018.
Following the verdict, McKnight was taken out of the courtroom in handcuffs to prison. Her bail was previously set at $300,000, but was increased to $3 million, by Judge Howard Knisley.
“The family is very, very pleased with the outcome,” Cumberland County District Attorney Sean McCormack, the prosecutor on the case, said. “We are very thankful that the jury heard us and heard Mike in that courtroom and we’re very pleased with the verdict.”
The Cumberland County DA’s office took over the case instead of Dauphin County, due to McKnight being a judge in Dauphin County.
In February 2024, McKnight was arrested, accused of shooting McCoy in the head. McCoy has suffered permanent vision loss, even partial blindness in one eye, as a result of his injuries.
McKnight served as a magisterial district judge for the 12-2-04 district, a portion of Harrisburg. In November 2023, McKnight was suspended from her job for the second time without pay. She was suspended based on misconduct allegations from the Judicial Conduct Board of Pennsylvania.
She was also previously in court for a case in which she was accused of shooting her estranged husband in 2019. She claimed it was self-defense and was eventually cleared of those charges.
McKnight was found guilty after two days of trial during which over 20 witnesses testified, and the prosecution and defense made their pleas to the jury. The jury heard from Susquehanna Township police officers, forensic scientists, medical professionals and friends and neighbors of McCoy.
On Tuesday, McCoy took the stand, asserting that he didn’t shoot himself and has never been suicidal. He said that he did not know who shot him on Feb. 10 because he was asleep and then woke up without any eyesight, but said that McKnight was the only other person in the house when he went to sleep.
McKnight opted not to testify.
In his closing arguments to the jury, McKnight’s attorney Cory Leshner honed in on the concept of “reasonable doubt,” urging members of the jury to identify their hesitation when deliberating and using that as grounds for a not-guilty verdict. He argued that the Cumberland County district attorney’s office did not provide sufficient evidence to put the gun in McKnight’s hands.
However, McCormack said that the circumstantial evidence in the case was enough to convict McKnight, meaning that there was enough indirect evidence to make inferences and connect the dots. If the jury believed McCoy’s testimony that he didn’t shoot himself, then McKnight was the only other person in the house.
McCormack also worked to establish motive by saying that McKnight was a jealous girlfriend and that McCoy had tried to end the relationship and repeatedly asked her to leave his home every day for a week before she shot him.
Leshner also focused on gunshot residue collected from both McKnight’s and McCoy’s hands. McCoy’s hands tested positive for significantly more residue than McKnight’s, which he said could be attributed to him being the one firing the gun.
However, gun expert witnesses testified that, when a gun is fired, most gunshot residue usually projects onto the target. McCormack also highlighted the fact that McKnight had been allowed to wash her hands following the shooting and had dropped a piece of her clothing that was being collected for testing into a toilet.
Following the verdict, Leshner made a motion, his second, for the judge to acquit McKnight of the charges, maintaining that the prosecution did not meet its burden of proof. The motion was denied.
Leshner later told reporters outside of the courthouse that he would be appealing the case.
“I cannot state with any more emphasis that I disagree with the judgment that they made,” he said. “Miss McKnight will absolutely be appealing this. She did not attempt to kill Mr. McCoy.”
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