Family and friends of slain teen Mackenzie Kingry said Tuesday that they want to avoid the “nightmare” of a new trial for one of her killers and hope the state’s highest court will reverse a decision granting him one.
Kingry was at a high school house party four days before her 18th birthday in 2004 when Angelo Montoya and another man shot randomly at the Wheat Ridge home. One of the bullets struck and killed the teen.
An appeals court in August overturned Angelo Montoya’s conviction for murder with extreme indifference, saying a district court erred in its jury instructions.
Lawyers with the state attorney general’s office this week asked the Colorado Supreme Court to sustain Montoya’s conviction — and the 54-year prison sentence that came with it.
College student Leah Raffa was in the upstairs bedroom, where Kingry was struck Oct. 23, 2004, and said it was a long time before she could put the events of that night behind her.
“She was one of my best friends, and losing her has been the most difficult experience of my life,” Raffa said. “The guilty verdict . . . did allow me to begin to move on with my life. The news that we might have to go through trial again is heartbreaking.”
Attorneys for Montoya, now 25, argued at trial that he and Dominic Duran, who each shot at the house from the same gun, were scared for their lives as they were chased away from the party. Duran, now 26, is not included in the appeal.
The Kingry family said in a statement crafted by King ry’s mother and two sisters that going through another trial “will be a true nightmare.”
They pointed out that King ry didn’t get to see her sisters get married or to be a part of her nephew’s life.
“Portraying the convicted murderers as victims to achieve their appeals is a legalistic ploy. The victims are not the two gang members who opened fire on a house full of kids,” they said. “Any person who brings illegally purchased guns to a high school party and kills someone belongs in jail.”
Two of three appeals- court judges agreed that the lower court’s error in instructing jurors was enough to justify a new trial.
“It was incumbent upon the court to give a self-defense instruction which embodied the defendant’s theory that he believed he was threatened by multiple assailants,” Judge Dennis Graham wrote in the appeals- court decision.
Assistant Attorney General Jennifer Berman argued in a motion filed Monday that general jury instructions and the defense’s closing arguments adequately informed jurors of the rules around multiple assailants.
There’s no deadline by which the state Supreme Court must decide whether to consider the case.
“The fact that they are claiming self-defense is . . . completely false,” the King rys said. “We appreciate the fact that this decision is being taken seriously, and we pray that the courts uphold the decision made in the original trial.”
