Twin brother defense rejected in appeal of Jeannette shooting case

A state appeals court has upheld the first-degree murder conviction and life prison sentence of a Penn Hills man who claimed his dead twin brother was responsible for a fatal shooting in Jeannette in 2017.

A three judge-panel of the Pennsylvania Superior Court ruled this week there was no merit to the appeal filed by Darrelle Tolbert-McGhee, who claimed evidence presented against him during his trial last year was not sufficient to support the conviction.

Tolbert-McGhee, now 32, claimed he was in Florida when 32-year-old Michael Wilson was gunned down outside of the Dollar General store near Clay Avenue in Jeannette on April 13, 2017. Tolbert-McGhee at trial claimed his twin brother, who was shot and killed in Wilkinsburg several months later, killed Wilson.

“From its verdict, the jury clearly credited the testimony identifying appellant as the shooter, and possessor of a firearm, and rejected appellant’s identification defenses. We cannot disturb this determination,” judges wrote in the 11-page opinion.

That ruling upheld a similar opinion issued last year by Westmoreland County Common Pleas Court Judge Meagan Bilik-DeFazio, who initially rejected Tolbert-McGhee’s appeal.

During last year’s trial, two witnesses identified Darrelle Tolbert-McGhee as Wilson’s killer, including one woman who said she exchanged phone numbers with him in the store minutes before the shooting.

Wilson’s girlfriend also told jurors that she could tell the Tolbert-McGhee brothers apart and identified him as the man prosecutors said was on surveillance video taken from security cameras near the scene before and after the murder.