Guilty: Jury returns verdict of first-degree murder in 2021 killing

A jury on Thursday found a man guilty of first-degree murder in the 2021 shooting death of 63-year-old Mike Guerra during a dispute that arose from a minor automobile collision outside an Albuquerque methadone clinic.

Jurors also convicted Adelio Gallegos, 43, of tampering with evidence for tossing the rifle used in the shooting out the window of a car.

The 2nd Judicial District Court jury reached its verdicts shortly before noon Thursday after four hours of deliberations.

The first-degree murder conviction requires Gallegos to serve a minimum of 30 years in prison before he is eligible for parole. District Judge Courtney Weaks said she will hold his sentencing hearing within 60 days.

The fatal shooting was captured on surveillance video and shown repeatedly to jurors during the three-day trial.

The trial centered on whether the chronic drug user can be convicted of first-degree murder, which requires proof of a “willful and deliberate” killing, or a lesser charge of second-degree murder or voluntary manslaughter.

Jurors apparently agreed with prosecutors that, despite his drug use, Gallegos acted deliberately when he retrieved a rifle from his car and shot Guerra once in the stomach on Madeira SE, just south of Central. The two men began arguing after Guerra backed into Gallegos’ car.

The New Mexico Supreme Court has found that voluntary intoxication can be a defense to first-degree murder, 2nd Judicial District Attorney Sam Bregman said Thursday. In this case, Jurors “obviously agreed with us that this individual did form the deliberate intent” to kill Guerra, he said.

Gallegos’ attorney, Keren Fenderson, had argued that Gallegos shouldn’t be convicted of first-degree murder because the longtime drug user didn’t make a “deliberate” decision to kill Guerra.

“We’d never make a decision — just because somebody uses drugs — not to charge them or convict them of first-degree murder,” Bregman said.

“For you to find him guilty of first-degree murder, you must find that he had not only the intent to kill, but that it was deliberate,” Fenderson told jurors Wednesday in closing arguments. “Deliberation requires more than just the intent to kill.”

Gallegos testified last week that at the time of the killing, he had been using methadone and fentanyl, both opioid drugs, cannabis and Xanax, a benzodiazepine. Gallegos told jurors he was not aware of shooting Guerra and had not realized that he had killed the older man until his arrest in January 2022, nearly a year after the killing.

Assistant District Attorney Christine Jablonsky told jurors that Gallegos was a “long-term addict” who understood what he was doing when he killed Guerra.

Security video showed that after a brief encounter between Guerra and Gallegos, the two parted ways for 17 seconds while Gallegos retrieved a rifle from the floorboard of his car, which he used to fatally shoot Guerra in the stomach, Jablonsky said. Guerra later died in a hospital.

“Seventeen seconds is a lot of time to decide to end another person’s life,” Jablonsky told jurors.

Gallegos also showed deliberate intent by running to his car and fleeing the scene after the shooting, and later throwing the rifle out of a car window, she said.