Commonwealth v. Barry

Kevin McCormack and Brian Porreca were part of a group leaving a bar and proceeded to a group member’s car. McCormack sat in the driver’s seat, and Porreca was preparing to enter the rear passenger’s side seat when he heard voices and turned to see Anthony Barry and Brian Cahill (defendants) running in their direction. Cahill ran toward the passenger’s side of the car and fired an Uzi into it, striking McCormack several times and striking Porreca twice. Barry ran toward the driver’s side of the car and fired a handgun into the back of McCormack’s head. Porreca managed to retreat back into the bar the group had just left and called the police. A .40-caliber pistol was found on the ground next to the driver’s side of the car, and the Uzi was turned in to the police by a teenager who had found it while walking home, close to the bar. According to the medical examiner, McCormack’s cause of death was multiple gunshot wounds. More specifically, the medical examiner determined that two separate gunshot wounds, one to the head and one to the back, were each in and of themselves lethal. The gunshot to the head was from a .40-caliber firearm, and the gunshot to the back was from a different firearm of undetermined caliber. Barry and Cahill were each convicted of first-degree murder. Barry and Cahill appealed on grounds that the commonwealth presented insufficient evidence to prove which gunshot was fatal.