BOSTON, Aug. 26, 2016—The state’s highest court today affirmed the first-degree murder conviction of a man who gunned down 25-year-old Derrick Barnes – five years almost to the day since the man was shot to death on the porch of a relative’s Fayston Street home, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

The Supreme Judicial Court affirmed the murder and firearms convictions of FRANKIE HERNDON (D.O.B. 4/9/84) for the Aug. 27, 2011, shooting that claimed Barnes’ life. A second man, FREDERICK HENDERSON (D.O.B. 11/25/83), was convicted at the same trial for his role in the murder; his appeal is still pending.

Herndon was identified by eyewitnesses who knew the defendants and whose accounts were corroborated by imagery from surveillance cameras near the scene. Among other arguments, Herndon claimed on appeal that the trial judge erred by using the state’s model jury instruction on eyewitness evidence rather than a version his attorney recommended. The high court rejected that argument and found that, although it had since updated that instruction, “The judge here did not abuse his discretion or otherwise err in declining to give the defendant’s requested eyewitness identification instruction and giving instead a version of the model … instruction.”

Evidence and testimony at trial established that Barnes, who once lived in Boston but had since moved out of town, was visiting family after Boston’s Caribbean Carnival. He was sitting on the porch of a family member’s home with several other people just after 7:00 p.m. when Herndon and Henderson approached from the sidewalk. Their conversation soon became a verbal altercation that ended when Henderson and Herndon pulled guns and opened fire. Barnes’ friends scattered; he was struck.

Henderson ran from the scene while Herndon calmly walked up to Barnes’ fallen body and fired again as the young man lay dying on the porch.  Barnes was pronounced dead of his injuries at Boston Medical Center.

Assistant District Attorney Teresa Anderson argued the case before the SJC. Assistant District Attorney Joseph Janezic, former chief of the Suffolk DA’s Gang Unit, prosecuted the case at trial. Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. Herndon was represented on appeal by attorney Theodore Riordan.

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All defendants are presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty beyond a reasonable doubt.