Garcia-Gallo v. State

The State charged the defendant with the machine-gun slaying of Jairo Montoya, committed in the presence of several witnesses, allegedly in reprisal for the victim’s harassment of the defendant’s friend over a drug debt. This appeal from a conviction for first-degree murder raises three issues as error: (1) a prior inconsistent statement of the State’s main witness should not have been excluded; (2) the trial court should have instructed the jury on all degrees of homicide and given the long-form definition of excusable homicide in response to a query by the jury; and (3) the response to the…