J-584007-16

NON-PRECEDENTIAL DECISION - SEE SUPERIOR COURT I.O.P. 65.37

IN THE SUPERIOR COURT OF
PENNSYLVANIA

COMMONWEALTH OF PENNSYLVANIA

Appellee

SHAUN C. WARRICK

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Appellant No. 6 EDA 2016

Appeal from the Judgment of Sentence August 20, 2015
In the Court of Common Pleas of Philadelphia County
Crirninal Division at No(s): CP-51-CR-0004005-2011

CP-Sl-CR-OOO4006-2011

BEFORE: OLSON, SOLANO and FITZGERALD,* .U.
MEMORANDUM BY OLSON, J.: FILED January 12, 2017

Appe|lant, Shaun C. Warricl<, appeals from the judgment of sentence
entered on August 20, 2015, as made final by the denial of Appe|lant’s post-
sentence motion on December 10, 2015. We affirm.

The trial court has ably summarized the underlying facts and

procedural posture of this appeal. As the trial court explained:

At trial, the Cornmonwealth presented the testimony of
Philadelphia Police Detectives John Logan and .`lames Burke,
Philadelphia Poiice Officers Heather Andrews, Robert Flade,
Jesus Cruz, and Robert Bal<os, FBI Agent William Shute,
Phi|ade|phia Assistant Medical Examiner Dr. Edwin
Lieberman, A|icia Watl<ins, Octavia Dugger, Kim Ivery, Lisa
Wiliiarns, Ke||y Hunt, Crysta| Smith, and Kiana Wall<er.
[Appellant] did not present any Witnesses. Viewed in the
light most favorable to the Commonwealth as the verdict
Winner, the evidence established the following.

On February 14, 2011, [Appe||ant], who had been arguing
with his girlfriend, Tiffany Barnhill, recruited a friend, Alicia

* Former Justice specially assigned to the Superior Court.

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Watkins, to go to Barnhill’s residence and fight her.
Watkins agreed to go with [Appellant], and recruited her
friend, Octavia Dugger, to accompany them. [Appellant],
Watkins, and Dugger then drove towards Barnhill’s horne in
[Appellant’s] car. While driving to Barnhill’s home,
[Appellant] made a series of phone calls to Mercedes Ivery,
Barnhi|l’s cousin, demanding to talk with Barnhill.

Upon arriving at Barnhi|i’s home, . . . [Appellant] exited the
vehicle and approached the door. [Appellant] kicked the
door, breaking it open, and entered the house. Watkins and
Dugger remained outside.

Shortly after [Appellant] entered the home, witnesses heard
a series of gunshots coming from within the home.
[Appellant] then ran out of the horne, with Watkins and
Dugger joining him as he returned to his car and drove
away. As [Appellant] left the house, he placed something in
the front of his pants. The day after the shooting, Watkins
asked [Appellant] what happened inside the home and
[Appellant] stated, “I fucked up.” [Appellant] would later
teii Watkins that he thought Watkins would “tell on him.”
[Appellant] also told Dugger not to “tell nobody about that
day.”

Minutes after the shooting, Mercedes Ivery’s younger sister,
Lexus, was walking horne to the Rut|and Street house when
two neighbors, who had seen [Appellant] enter the home
and heard the gunshots, called out to her. Lexus then
called her mother, Kim Ivery, and told her about the
gunshots in their home, which prompted Kim Ivery to call
[the] police. No one other than [Appellant] was seen
entering or exiting the home, either [30] minutes before the
shooting or after the shooting, before police arrived on
scene.

When the police arrived, they immediately noticed the
broken door and proceeded into the home. Upon entering
the horne and going upstairs, police found [Tiffany] Barnhill
and [Mercedes] Ivery in the upstairs bedrooms, with
multiple gunshot wounds. Both women were dead. Police
did not find anyone else in the home.

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Ivery was shot a total of seven times: once in her face,
once to the back left side of her head, twice in the left side
of her chest, once in her right buttock, once in her left thigh
and hip, and once in her right wrist. The shot to Ivery’s
head penetrated her skuil and brain. One of the gunshot
wounds to her chest penetrated her left lung and heart.
Barnhi|l was shot a total of five times: once in her left
shoulder and neck, once in her upper chest, near her
armpit, which penetrated her left lung, once through the
breast, which also penetrated her left lung, once on her
side, which penetrated her diaphragm and liver, and once in
her abdomen, penetrating her pancreas.

Police recovered a totai of [14] .40 caliber fired cartridge
casings from the [] house. Later examination would show
that these fired cartridge casings were all fired from the
same firearm. Police also recovered several projectiles,
buliet jackets, and bullet jacket fragments, all of which were
consistent with being fired from a .40 caliber firearm.

Police also conducted an analysis of the cell phone
[Appeliant] possessed on the day of the murders. Through
cell phone tower analysis, the cell phone records showed
that the possessor of that phone [traveled] to the area of
the murders at the time of the shootings. The records also
detailed a series of phone calls between that phone and
[Mercedes Ivery’s] cell phone throughout the early
afternoon hours leading up to the time of the homicide. The
phone also was used to make a series of phone calls to the
home phone of the crime scene prior to the murders.

On August 19, 2015, following a capital jury trial before [the
trial] court, [Appellant] was convicted of two counts of first
degree murder [], one count of burglary [], one count of
carrying a firearm without a iicense [], and one count of
carrying a firearm on the streets of Philadelphia[.l].
Fo|lowing a penalty phase hearing on August 20, 2015, [the
trial court] imposed an aggregate sentence of two

 

1 18 Pa.C.S.A. §§ 2502, 3502, 6106, and 6108, respectively.

_3_

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consecutive life sentences plus 16 to 32 [years']

incarceration. . . . [Appellant] filed [a timely] post-sentence
motion[], which the [trial] court denied on December 10,
2015.

Tria| Court Opinion, 3/17/16, at 1-4 (internal citations and footnote
omitted).
Appellant filed a timely notice of appeal and now raises the following

claims to this Court:

[1.] Is [Appellant] entitled to an arrest of judgment on the
charge of murder in the first degree, burglary and VUFA,
§ 6106 and § 6108 where the evidence is insufficient to
sustain the verdict?

[2.] Is [Appellant] entitled to a new trial on all charges

where the greater weight of the evidence does not support
the Cornmonwea|th’s verdict?

Appe||ant’s Brief at 3.

We reviewed the briefs of the parties, the relevant law, the certified
record, the notes of testimony, and the opinion of the able trial court judge,
the Honorabie G|enn B. Bronson. We conclude that there has been no error
in this case and that Judge Bronson‘s opinion, entered on March 17, 2016,
meticulously and accurately disposes of Appeliant’s issues on appeal.
Therefore, we affirm on the basis of Judge Bronson’s opinion and adopt it as
our own. In any future filings with this or any other court addressing this
ruiing, the filing party shall attach a copy of the trial court opinion.

Judgment of sentence affirmed.

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Judgment Entered.

 

J seph D. Seletyn, Es .
Prothonotary

Date: 1[12[2017

