A New Jersey man who fatally shot his girlfriend’s drug dealer had his murder conviction reinstated Tuesday by the state’s top court.
The New Jersey Supreme Court voted 7-0 to reinstate the conviction of Michael Owens, who was behind bars for killing Luis Gonzalez in July 2020 in Trenton.
Owens, now 32, was first convicted in 2022, after a jury agreed with investigators that he choked his girlfriend in rage, then drove to Gonzalez’s home and gunned him down.
Owens was angry at both Gonzalez and his girlfriend because Gonzalez was selling her heroin, authorities said. On appeal, Owens argued that he should have been eligible for a manslaughter, not murder, conviction because it was a “passion/provocation” case.
The first appeals court agreed with Owens’ argument, tossing his murder conviction in 2024. However, he remained in jail for the aggravated assault of his girlfriend, and prosecutors in Morris County appealed the case to New Jersey’s top court.
On Tuesday, the state Supreme Court reversed the ruling, deciding that Owens was not entitled to the lower manslaughter standard because his defense attorneys never mentioned it during his trial.
“No passion/provocation manslaughter charge was required because ‘Gonzalez did not provoke defendant’ [and] defendant ‘had ample time to cool off before he shot Gonzalez,’” the high court wrote, citing the dissenting opinion of Judge Robert Gilson from the initial appeal.
Owens also appealed his sentence, which will be handled by a lower court. He was initially sentenced to 45 years in prison.
