This section contains the nature of the case and procedural background.

On December 17, 1992, Shamel Burroughs engaged in a gun battle with Jermaine Russell (D) and Khary Bekka in a housing project in Brooklyn. Patrick Daly, a public-school principal, looking for a child who had left school, was fatally wounded by a single stray nine-millimeter bullet that struck him in the chest. Burroughs, Bekka, and D--defendants on this appeal--were all charged with second-degree murder Two separate juries, one for Burroughs and another for D and Bekka, were impaneled contemporaneously and heard the evidence presented at trial. Ballistics tests were inconclusive in determining which defendant actually fired the bullet that killed Daly. The prosecution theorized that each of them acted with the mental culpability required for commission of the crime and that each 'intentionally aided' the defendant who fired the fatal shot. Both juries convicted defendants of second degree, depraved indifference murder. On appeal, each defendant challenges the sufficiency of the evidence.

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