Jurors in New London Superior Court heard closing arguments Monday morning at the murder trial of Dante Hughes and began deliberating in the late afternoon after Judge Barbara Bailey Jongbloed instructed them on the law in the case.

Hughes, 32, is charged with murdering Joey Gingerella in the parking lot of Ryan's Pub in Groton on Dec. 11, 2016, after Gingerella and other bar patrons tried to stop Hughes from assaulting his girlfriend. He claims he shot Gingerella in self-defense when it appeared Gingerella was reaching for a gun, though the 24-year-old victim had no weapon.

The state has decided to give the 12-member jury the option of finding Hughes guilty of the "lesser included charge" of first-degree manslaughter with a firearm with reckless indifference for human life. Should the panel decide that Hughes did not commit murder, which is to kill with intent to cause a death, they may then consider whether he shot and killed Gingerella with intent to cause serious physical injury.

Should the jury accept Hughes' claim of self-defense, they would have to find that he reasonably believed he was in danger of imminent death or serious bodily injury when he shot Gingerella. The state has the burden of disproving the claim beyond a reasonable doubt.

More than 30 family members and friends filled the victim's side of the courtroom gallery for the closing arguments. Several police officers who worked on the case were in attendance, along with the Groton Town Police Chief Louis J. Fusaro and Deputy Chief Paul Gately. Hughes' mother, Angela Mims, sat on the other side of the aisle with unrelated court observers.  

In his closing argument, prosecutor Paul J. Narducci discounted the self-defense claim, saying Hughes had only brought it up 10 days after the shooting, when police had retrieved him from the Canadian border and were interrogating him at town police headquarters.

"He runs from the scene," Narducci said. "He doesn't tell the police, 'Something terrible happened. I was scared. Joey reached into his waist.' Was he clearly scared or was he running because he knew he had killed somebody?"

During the police interrogation, Narducci said, Hughes "never shows one iota of remorse about a person he killed. He's only concerned about how much time he's going to do." And when he finally admitted he shot Gingerella, he didn't say that there had been a mistake, but that it was self-defense, Narducci said.

Defense attorney Walter D. Hussey acknowledged that Gingerella and the others who went into the parking lot to stop Hughes from assaulting his girlfriend were doing the right thing, but that what happened with Gingerella was "entirely different." He repeated the testimony of one of the bar patrons, Andrew Flynn, that Gingerella had a tendency to talk recklessly along with Hughes' claim from the interrogation that Gingerella had called him a racial slur and threatened to "(expletive) him up" if Hughes didn't stop beating his girlfriend.

He said no one could refute Hughes' claim of self-defense because none of the witnesses actually saw the shooting. Hussey played the jury the last few minutes of recording from the interrogation room at police headquarters. Allowed to call his mother after confessing to shooting Gingerella, Hughes cried to his mother and said, "I just told them it was self-defense, and it was."

k.florin@theday.com