Phillips v. Commonwealth

COOPER, Justice.

On Thanksgiving Day, November 28, 1996, seventeen-year-old Natasha Yates was shot and killed during an exchange of gunfire between Appellants Jonathan Leigh Phillips and John DeMarco Johnson. Following a joint trial in the Fayette Circuit Court, both Phillips and Johnson were convicted of wanton murder, KRS 507.020(l)(b), and each was sentenced to twenty-five years in prison. Phillips was also convicted of tampering with physical evidence, KRS 524.100, and received a concurrent sentence of five years in prison for that conviction. Both appeal to this Court as a matter of…