Kaitlyn Conley Case: Conviction, Reversal, and Retrial Fight

The Kaitlyn Conley case is a New York poisoning prosecution that ended in a 2017 manslaughter conviction, was overturned in January 2025 after an appellate court found her trial lawyer had failed her, and remains legally unresolved. Conley, a chiropractor’s receptionist, served roughly seven years of a 23-year sentence for the colchicine poisoning death of her boss Mary Yoder before her release in February 2025. As of mid-2026 she has no conviction and no pending charges, while the Oneida County District Attorney’s office fights the sitting judge for the ability to bring the case back to a grand jury.

How Mary Yoder Died

Mary Louise Yoder was a 60-year-old chiropractor who owned Chiropractic Family Care in Whitesboro, New York, with her husband, William “Bill” Yoder. On July 21, 2015, she was hospitalized with vomiting, diarrhea, and severe abdominal pain. Her heart stopped multiple times, and she was pronounced dead the next day.¹

An autopsy by Dr. Robert Stoppacher of the Onondaga County Medical Examiner’s Office determined her cause of death was colchicine toxicity. Colchicine is a prescription drug typically used to treat gout. NMS Labs in Pennsylvania identified toxic levels in Yoder’s blood and gastric content, and the presence of the drug in her stomach contents supported the conclusion that it had been ingested orally.²

Why Suspicion Turned To Kaitlyn Conley

Conley had worked at the Yoder family’s chiropractic office for about four years and had been in an on-again, off-again relationship with Mary Yoder’s son, Adam Yoder, from roughly 2011 to 2015. Friends and family described the relationship as turbulent. Conley alleged Adam had sexually assaulted her in 2014; Adam denied it, and police said they found no evidence supporting the claim.³

In November 2015, the Oneida County Sheriff’s Office received an anonymous letter claiming Adam Yoder had poisoned his mother. The letter said that if the toxin was colchicine, a bottle would be found under the passenger seat of Adam’s Jeep Wrangler. Investigators searched the Jeep with Adam’s consent and found exactly that, along with a crumpled receipt from a chemical supplier called Art Chemicals.⁴

Investigators quickly doubted the letter’s story. Adam had been roughly 300 miles away on Long Island when his mother fell ill, and he had voluntarily cooperated with the sheriff’s office.¹ Attention shifted to Conley after she was identified as the letter’s author. During a December 21, 2015 interview she admitted writing it, telling investigators she feared Adam and that he had confessed the killing to her.⁴

The Evidence Against Her

Prosecutors tied Conley to the poison through several strands of evidence:

DNA testing on the colchicine vial and its cardboard wrapper excluded Adam Yoder and identified Conley as a “major contributor” on both items.⁴
Conley admitted buying a prepaid debit card in Adam Yoder’s name. Its serial number matched the serial number on the Art Chemicals receipt from Adam’s Jeep.⁴
The front-desk computer at the chiropractic office had been used on April 27, 2015 to view pages about colchicine and its effects, to browse the Art Chemicals site in a private window, and to access a Google account called “mradamyoder1990.”⁵
Conley’s cell phone had “colchicine” and misspellings of it saved in its user dictionary, meaning the words had been typed by the user. Her Notes app contained a November 1, 2015 entry that read in part: “AY k his mother. He put something called ‘cokillsine’ in one of her vitamins.”⁵

Prosecutors alleged Conley laced Mary Yoder’s vitamins with colchicine, a theory consistent with the drug being found in Yoder’s gastric content.¹ A toxicologist from the Upstate Poison Center testified that a lethal dose for Yoder would have required between 55 and 91 pills.²

Two Trials And A Conviction

Conley was indicted on June 13, 2016, on charges of second-degree murder, forgery, falsifying business records, and two counts of larceny.¹ Her first trial, held in Oneida County Court, ended in a mistrial on May 18, 2017, after five days of deliberations produced a hung jury.⁶

At the second trial later in 2017, a new defense attorney, Frank Policelli, argued that Conley was a “pawn” framed by her “controlling, abusive ex-boyfriend.”⁷ The jury acquitted her of second-degree murder but convicted her of first-degree manslaughter, finding a “reasonable view of the evidence” that she intended to cause serious physical injury rather than death. In January 2018, she was sentenced to 23 years in prison followed by five years of post-release supervision.⁸

Why The Conviction Was Overturned

Conley’s direct appeal was denied, and the New York Court of Appeals declined to hear the case. Around 2021, attorney Melissa Swartz took over and filed a challenge under Criminal Procedure Law 440, which allows defendants to attack a conviction on grounds outside the trial record, such as ineffective assistance of counsel.⁹

The heart of Swartz’s argument was the search warrant for Conley’s cell phone. The warrant authorized the sheriff’s office to “seize” the phone and return it to the court “without unnecessary delay.” Instead, investigators sent the device to a cybersecurity and forensics center for a full memory extraction. The warrant also failed to specify what items should be seized in relation to designated crimes, making it facially deficient under Fourth Amendment standards.¹⁰ Conley’s first-trial attorney, Christopher Pelli, had never moved to suppress the resulting evidence.

Oneida County Court Judge Michael L. Dwyer denied the motion in February 2024, but the Appellate Division in Rochester granted Swartz permission to appeal on May 16, 2024.¹¹ On January 31, 2025, the Appellate Division, Fourth Judicial Department, ruled in her favor. It found that Pelli’s failure to move to suppress the cell phone evidence was “sufficiently egregious and prejudicial as to compromise her right to a fair trial.” Data from the phone had been used to elicit Conley’s admission about the prepaid debit card, and prosecutors had leaned heavily on the phone evidence at the second trial. The court vacated the manslaughter conviction and dismissed count one of the indictment without prejudice, leaving prosecutors free to seek a new indictment.¹⁰

Conley was released from the Bedford Hills Correctional Facility on February 4, 2025. An Oneida County judge found no legal cause to hold her, over prosecution objections that she should be detained pending a potential new indictment.⁷

The Fight Over A New Prosecution

What has happened since Conley’s release is a procedural standoff between the Oneida County District Attorney’s office and Supreme Court Justice Bernadette T. Clark.

The Sealing Order

On February 4, 2025, the day Conley was released, Judge Clark sealed the case records under CPL 160.50, which governs sealing when a criminal action ends favorably for the defendant. The DA’s office did not object at the time.¹²

In April 2025, DA Todd Carville announced that his office would present evidence to a new grand jury “to determine what, if any, charges would be appropriate.”¹³ At a closed hearing on June 10, 2025, Judge Clark found that Assistant District Attorney Nicholas Fletcher had presented sealed evidence to a grand jury in violation of her sealing order. The DA’s office had attempted to route around the seal by having the sheriff’s office apply to unseal the records, citing an “ongoing investigation.” Judge Clark denied the motion, calling the request a “pretext,” and noted testimony from a sheriff’s lieutenant confirming that no investigator was currently assigned to the Mary Yoder case.¹⁴ Two days later, on June 12, 2025, she ordered the DA’s office to “cease and desist from any further re-presentment of sealed evidence to the grand jury.”¹⁵

The Recusal Motion

In late June 2025, DA Carville moved to have Judge Clark recused. He alleged judicial bias on several grounds, including a deposition from former DA Scott McNamara claiming that Judge Clark had said at a December 2025 holiday party that she believed Conley was innocent and Bill Yoder was responsible. The DA also argued the sealing order was self-contradictory, since it preserved the People’s right to re-present the case while sealing the evidence needed to do so.¹⁶

On September 11, 2025, Judge Clark denied the recusal motion. She said she had “no reservation whatsoever” about her fairness and impartiality, called the DA’s supporting depositions “factually inaccurate and professionally irresponsible,” and characterized the motion as “judge shopping,” noting that no accusatory instrument was pending and that the motion arrived only after she ruled against the prosecution.¹⁷ Defense attorney Melissa Swartz called the motion a “last-ditch effort to deflect from their own easily preventable failures.”¹⁸

Appeals

The DA sought a writ of prohibition to undo Judge Clark’s cease-and-desist order. On June 5, 2026, the Appellate Division, Fourth Department, unanimously dismissed that petition.¹⁵ A separate appeal of the February 4, 2025 sealing order was initially dismissed, then reinstated on April 6, 2026, with a deadline to perfect it by May 6, 2026. Its outcome has not been reported.¹⁹

Where The Case Stands Now

Kaitlyn Conley has no active conviction and no pending charges. She has been free since February 2025 and continues to maintain her innocence, suggesting in interviews for a 2024 Hulu docuseries that Adam and Bill Yoder know more about Mary Yoder’s death than she does.³ The DA’s office has said it intends to re-present the case to a grand jury, but its ability to do so is constrained by Judge Clark’s sealing order and the ongoing appellate litigation. Whether prosecutors can build a viable case without the cell phone evidence the appellate court found unconstitutionally obtained is the open question.

1
NBC News. Kaitlyn Conley Murder Trial: Mary Yoder
2
Utica Observer-Dispatch. Testimony Centers on Autopsy, Anonymous Letter
3
ABC News. Little Miss Innocent Dives Into Kaitlyn Conley’s Conviction
4
NY Courts. People v. Conley
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Utica Observer-Dispatch. Computer, Cellphone Evidence Detailed in Conley Trial
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NY1. Kaitlyn Conley Mistrial Declared, Hung Jury
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Syracuse.com. Kaitlyn Conley Released From Custody After Conviction Overturned
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FindLaw. People v. Conley, Appellate Division
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Utica Observer-Dispatch. Kaitlyn Conley’s Manslaughter Conviction Overturned
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NY Courts. People v. Conley, Fourth Department Appellate Decision
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Syracuse.com. Kaitlyn Conley Wins Chance to Appeal
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Utica Observer-Dispatch. Oneida County DA Files Appeal in Conley Case
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Syracuse.com. New Grand Jury to Hear Evidence in Poisoning Death
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WKTV. Judge: Asst. District Attorney Violated Court Order in Conley Grand Jury
15
NY Courts. Matter of Carville v. Clark
16
Utica Observer-Dispatch. Oneida County DA Moves to Remove Judge From Conley Case
17
New York Codes, Rules and Regulations. Matter of People (Clark)
18
WKTV. Kaitlyn Conley Free as Legal Wrangling Continues
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NY Courts. People v. Conley, 2026 NY Slip Op 67099