First-degree murder convictions in Valentine's Day double slayings
Jurors will next have to decide whether to sentence Shaun Warrick to life in prison or the death penalty.
A JURY YESTERDAY convicted a Logan man of two counts of first-degree murder and related offenses in the 2011 Valentine's Day shooting deaths of his girlfriend and her cousin.
As the jury forewoman announced the guilty verdicts, Shaun Warrick, 32, shook his head back and forth.
Warrick was convicted of killing his girlfriend, Tiffany Barnhill, 19, and her cousin, Marcedes Ivery, 21, in Ivery's house on Rutland Street near Cheltenham Avenue, in Frankford, shortly before 3:45 p.m. Feb. 14, 2011.
Ivery's mother, Kim Ivery, wept as she heard the verdicts. She sat in the second row of the courtroom gallery with her hands clasped together on her forehead and rocked back and forth.
Other female family members of the victims held hands with each other, and softly wept.
The panel of six men and six women will return this morning to hear the penalty phase of the trial. Assistant District Attorney Thomas Lipscomb will argue for Warrick to be sentenced to the death penalty.
Defense attorney Jack McMahon will argue for jurors to sentence his client to life in prison.
The jury deliberated for about three hours Tuesday afternoon and half a day yesterday before reaching its verdict.
Jurors on Tuesday sent two notes to Common Pleas Judge Glenn Bronson. They again wanted to see photos of the two victims after they were shot, and wanted to see a diagram of the second floor of the house where the women were killed in separate bedrooms.
They also asked whether the trigger of a semiautomatic gun needs to be pulled each time to shoot it, or if the gun would just keep firing once the trigger was pulled. The judge told them he could not answer factual questions for them, but they instead would have to rely on a ballistician's testimony.
Yesterday, jurors had read back to them the testimony of police ballistician Jesus Cruz. He had testified that 14 fired cartridge casings were found at the scene, and that all had been fired from the same .40-caliber semiautomatic gun. Both women were shot multiple times.
Cruz had also testified about the mechanism of firing a semiautomatic weapon. "Every action has an equal and opposite reaction," he said with regard to pulling a trigger.
Evidence in the trial showed that Barnhill and Warrick had been dating for about a month, and had been arguing before Valentine's Day. Barnhill apparently didn't want to see him or speak to him the weekend before.
Warrick tried to reach Barnhill on the phone through her cousin, Marcedes Ivery. Barnhill didn't have her own phone at the time. Warrick was allegedly angry at Ivery, too, because she wouldn't let him speak to Barnhill.
Warrick had been featured in 2007 on "America's Most Wanted" in connection with a Maryland case. He had been accused of shooting two University of Maryland-Eastern Shore college students and stabbing a third. He was acquitted of attempted-murder charges in that case.