Philly woman found guilty of manslaughter, assault in Lincoln University stabbing

After nine hours of deliberation, a Chester County jury delivered a split verdict late Wednesday night in the trial of a Philadelphia woman who stabbed three Lincoln University students last year, acquitting her of murder, the most serious charge she faced.

The jurors found Nydira Smith, 40, guilty of involuntary manslaughter, aggravated assault, simple assault and possession of an instrument of a crime in a February 2022 fight at the historically Black university that left one student dead and two others injured.

But they spared Smith of first- and third-degree murder, as well as voluntary manslaughter.

During closing arguments Wednesday morning, Smith’s lawyer, Gregory Pagano, said she believed her brother’s life was in danger when she used a steak knife that she had brought with her during the melee, killing Jawine Evans, 21, and wounding two other students, Clifton Walker and Eric Dickerson.

Pagano had urged jurors to acquit Smith of the murder and aggravated assault charges, saying she was within her rights to use deadly force.

“This is not a murder,” Pagano said in his closing arguments. “Murder requires malice, and what we have here are numerous factors that justify Nydira Smith’s conduct that night.”

Hours later, Pagano called the jury’s decision a thoughtful verdict, and said it was a victory for his client.

“It means that the jury believed she acted in self-defense, and believed she was justified in protecting herself and her brother,” he said.

But Deputy District Attorney Bridget Gallagher in her own closings had sharply disputed the defense’s assertions about the case. Gallagher said that a majority of Smith’s statements about the fight that led to the fatal stabbing were fabrications, part of a concocted self-defense claim to avoid a conviction.

“We’re not here for a fistfight. We’re not here for a fight between two groups of college kids,” Gallagher said, adding that Pagano was asking jurors to ignore a “mountain of evidence.”

“We’re here because of the actions of this woman, who, at 39 years of age, decided she wanted to stop the fight.”

Gallagher and her cocounsel, Deputy District Attorney Justin Roberts, declined to comment on the verdict.

Smith, of East Mount Airy, testified earlier in the seven-day trial before Chester County Court Judge Nicole Forzato that she intentionally stabbed Walker and Dickerson, who were attacking her younger brother, a senior at Lincoln. But she said she did not intend to stab Evans, who was stabbed in the neck as she swung the steak knife wildly.

» READ MORE: Woman charged with fatally stabbing a Lincoln University student said she never intended to kill anyone

The knife severed a vein in Evans’ neck and punctured his lung, an autopsy revealed. Video of the fight played during the trial showed Smith swinging the blade down toward Evans who is then shown running away, bleeding heavily and screaming, “She stabbed me.”

The wound was several inches deep, and required a significant amount of force to inflict with a dull steak knife, Gallagher noted.

Pagano said that Smith had received a call from her brother, Malik Stevens, earlier that evening, saying he and his roommate had been attacked by a group of students including Walker and Dickerson, and asked for Smith to take him back to the city. The attackers had accused Stevens and his roommate of stealing another student’s wallet.

“Malik didn’t call a group of men to help him retaliate. He calls his sister to pick him up,” Pagano said. “This woman was not an initial aggressor, not a provoker ... . She was not a person there to start a fight.”

While driving from Philadelphia to the campus, Smith was told by Stevens that during a second fight, one of the attackers had threatened to come back with a gun. Those thoughts were in her mind, Pagano said, as a third fight broke out in the hallway outside Stevens’ dorm room after Walker “sucker punched” Smith in the face.

» READ MORE: Woman arrested in killing of Lincoln University student was allowed on campus because she was ‘family,’ official said

“These were relentless predators, relentless aggressors who planned three attacks in the span of two hours,” Pagano said of the victims. “They know that but for their actions, this woman would not be put in this terrible position.”

But Gallagher disputed that version of the final fight. She said the initial scrap had ended, and the victims had begun to leave, when Stevens taunted them, sparking another brawl. During that second conflict, Gallagher said, Smith pushed her way to the front of the group and pulled the knife from her pocket.

Smith and Stevens fled the campus without calling 911, driving more than an hour back to Philadelphia. On that drive, according to Smith’s testimony, they disposed of the knife and did not discuss the stabbing, only doing so when they got an alert from Lincoln saying that Evans had died.

Gallagher scoffed at that statement.

“You get an email saying someone is dead and you don’t talk about it?” she said. “One year and eight months ago, she planned what she would say to you.”

The prosecutor noted that Smith’s behavior after the stabbing betrayed a guilty conscience: She bought a second phone, moved temporarily into a hotel and deleted messages from her main cell phone.

“That fight would have ended without the defendant,” Gallagher said. “She was Jawine Evans’ judge and jury that day. And she gave him the ultimate sentence for fighting her brother.”

Smith will remain in custody at the county prison until her sentencing, which will be scheduled in the coming weeks.