BOSTON, June 14, 2013—A Suffolk Superior Court jury today convicted two Roxbury men of murdering 25-year-old Derrick Barnes as he stood on the porch of a Fayston Street home two years ago, Suffolk County District Attorney Daniel F. Conley said.

After about two and a half weeks of trial and about three days of deliberations, jurors convicted both FREDERICK HENDERSON (D.O.B. 11/25/83) and FRANKIE HERNDON (D.O.B. 4/9/84) of first-degree murder and unlawful possession of a firearm.

Assistant District Attorney Joseph J. Janezic III, deputy chief of the DA’s Gang Unit, introduced evidence and testimony proving that Barnes, who once lived in Boston but had since moved out of town, was visiting family after Boston’s Caribbean Carnival on Aug. 27, 2011.

Janezic proved that Barnes was standing on a porch with several other people just after 7:00 p.m. when the defendants approached from the sidewalk. A conversation began, which soon became a verbal altercation that ended when Henderson and Herndon pulled guns and opened fire. Barnes’ friends scattered; he was struck.

Janezic demonstrated that 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.

“This was a particularly cold-blooded murder by two violent, dangerous gunmen,” Conley said. “They were driving forces in Boston’s gang violence and this verdict makes our city a safer place by taking them off the street.”

Herndon and Henderson were identified by people at the scene whose accounts were corroborated by surveillance images from nearby cameras. Henderson has been held without bail since his arrest in October 2011, while Herndon was apprehended the same month in North Carolina and was arraigned in Boston later.

Also today, testimony got under way in the re-trial of CHARLES WILLIAMS (D.O.B. 8/24/79), charged with first-degree murder for the July 4, 2009, shooting that claimed the life of David Brimley on Shawmut Avenue. Williams’ first trial ended in a hung jury in May.

Jury selection is also under way in the re-trial of DARRYL MITCHELL (D.O.B. 3/13/87), charged with manslaughter for the May 15, 2011, fatal stabbing of 29-year-old Andrew Wyman in the South End.  Mitchell’s first trial also ended in a deadlock earlier this year.

Katherine Moran was the DA’s assigned victim-witness advocate. The defendants were represented by attorneys Eliot Weinstein and John Tardiff. Both face mandatory life terms without the possibility of parole at a Tuesday morning sentencing hearing.

–30–

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