Appellant Alex Funes was convicted of the murder of Daniel Sentillan and other crimes after a pool hall fight in Clayton County. He challenges the sufficiency of the evidence against him, the trial court’s refusal to give a voluntary manslaughter jury instruction, the effectiveness of his trial counsel, the admission of his post-arrest statement, and the trial court’s sustaining an objection to his cross examination of a State witness. We affirm. 1. The evidence at trial, viewed in the light most favorable to the verdict, showed the following.1 On November 14, 2008, the victim accompanied Eduardo Vargas and three other men to a local pool hall. Vargas, the only gang member in the group, encountered members of a rival gang on his way to the restroom. One of the rivals, Appellant, got in Vargas’s face and started arguing. Vargas pushed him, and Appellant removed his shirt to reveal a white tank top. The two groups then began to fight. The brawl spilled out into the parking lot, where someone yelled, “Get the gun.” Appellant —identifiable by his white tank top and by distinctive tattoos on his chest, neck, and shoulders —then drew a .380 caliber pistol, and as Vargas and his group, who were all unarmed, started running for their car, Appellant opened fire. One bullet, fired from “intermediate range,” struck the victim in the head and killed him. Police recovered three .380 caliber shell casings from the scene, all fired from the same gun.
Upon hearing a description of the shooter and his tattoos, a police officer familiar with Appellant from his work obtaining information on local street gangs believed he might be the gunman. After an eyewitness identified Appellant in a photo lineup as the shooter, he was arrested and taken to a police precinct, where he read and signed a form waiving his Miranda rights. Appellant then admitted that he had fired three shots from a .380 caliber pistol on the night in question and that he was wearing a white tank top when he opened fire, although he claimed to have done so in self-defense.
