Grant Crawford
Estevan Montoya is sworn in before testifying during the final day of his murder trail on Monday.
Before attorneys delivered their closing arguments in the murder trial for Estevan Montoya on Monday, the defendant took the stand, speaking for the first time since he was arrested for firing the bullet that killed local basketball-standout Fedonta “JB” White at a party in August of 2020.
For more than a year, Montoya and his attorneys have argued that he shot White in self defense at the home in Chupadero, where an estimated 50 to 150 youths showed up for what was supposed to be an ordinary high school party. Montoya, who was 16 at the time, is charged as an adult with first-degree murder, among other crimes.
Montoya’s version of the incident remains the same: He was running away from White and, in fear for his safety, shot White once with a .380 caliber pistol. He doubled down in front of a Santa Fe jury Monday.
“The only option I had was the gun,” Montoya said.
The jury has heard testimony about the various arguments that broke out the night White died, including an altercation that occurred outside of the home between two of Montoya’s friends. Multiple witnesses said White told the group involved in a drunken quarrel to shut one of the teenagers up, at which point Montoya confronted the future University of New Mexico basketball player.
Several accounts from those at the party point to Montoya as the aggressor, but the now 18-year-old testified that he was instead trying to de-escalate the situation
As arguments erupted at an alcohol-fueled party in Chupadero, Montoya testified that he told White to “mind your own business.”
“He didn’t even let me finish what I was saying when he was already lunging off the porch, throwing [a] power punch,” Montoya said. “I remember when he threw the punch…I could feel, I could see the strength, the force, his speed that he had.”
Montoya said he was scared, so he took off running and could feel White closing in. With nowhere to go, he testified, he took his gun out of his waistband and fired one shot around his shoulder. He then hopped a fence, ran down the driveway of the home and fired one more shot into the air, he claims, because he thought he was still being chased.
After a nearly two-week trial, Chief Deputy District Attorney Blake Nichols in his closing argument told jurors he was tired of hearing the defense “make this case about JB White.”
“Let’s assume…that JB was swinging. Who cares? It doesn’t give this man the right to murder,” he said, pointing at Montoya.
Charged with first-degree murder, the state has to prove that the killing was willful, deliberate and premeditated; or that Montoya was acting under a depraved mind with no regard for human life. Nichols showed the jury a photograph of the scene that had stickers on it, placed by witnesses, indicating where the crowd of people were standing when the gun was fired—they surrounded the location where White was shot.
“If you want to talk about outrageously reckless conduct, indicating a depraved mind and lack of concern for other people’s lives, it’s right here, folks,” Nichols said. “Anyone of these young people could have been killed. It would not have made it any less tragic and it wouldn’t have made him any less guilty.”
Grant Crawford
The state’s narrative has featured accusations that Montoya’s group of friends, who call themselves the Southside Goons, are a gang and that Montoya’s actions were par for the course, claiming he lived the life of a violent criminal. The defendant admitted on the stand the group “thought of ourselves as a gang,” but later abandoned the idea, saying they were not really akin to major organized criminal organizations.
Now, the state is trying to paint Montoya “as this ruthless, evil guy,” defense attorney Dan Marlowe said in his closing. Marlowe said the truth is that the teenager, suffering from PTSD after witnessing the death of his close friend weeks prior, didn’t intentionally kill White, but that he reacted to being chased by someone much larger than him.
“The facts are on our side,” Marlowe said. “The facts are where you decide what happened and they don’t show willful killing and they don’t show reckless, depraved-mind killing. They show a kid running to keep from getting injured and acting.”
The jury is expected to continue deliberations on Tuesday. Should the panel not come to an agreement on the first-degree murder charge, it could find him guitly for second-degree murder if the jury concludes Montoya shot White without lawful justifcation, knowing it created a strong probability of death.
Outside the presence of the jury, Marlowe motioned for Judge T. Glenn Ellington to instruct jurors to consider whether Montoya acted in self defense. However, he denied the motion, saying “there is no reasonable basis for the type of fear that Mr. Montoya claims to have had that necessitated him responding to one or two missed blows with deadly force and killing Mr. White.”
Jurors could still make that determination, but Ellington’s instructions did not specifically mention self defense.
