AUBURN – Jurors wasted little time Wednesday before finding a Lewiston man guilty of murder in the strangulation of his girlfriend.

Francoise Gallant, 54, had admitted choking Cherie Ann Andrews on Jan. 24 during a drunken argument in her Park Street apartment but testified that he was so drunk he didn’t know what he was doing.

The Androscoggin County Superior Court jury had a choice of three verdicts: guilty of murder, guilty of manslaughter or innocent.

Justice Thomas Delahanty II did not set a date for sentencing. Gallant faces a minimum of 25 years in prison and a maximum of life.

In closing arguments, defense counsel James Howaniec said Gallant was high and drunk after 12 hours of pill popping and beer drinking and was suffering from depression. He said his client intended only to quiet Andrews, not kill her.

But Assistant Attorney General Fernand LaRochelle said if that were the case, Gallant would only have had to choke her for 15 seconds, at which point she would have passed out, according to medical testimony.

Instead, LaRochelle said, the defendant kept a towel wrapped around his girlfriend’s neck for up to a minute and a half longer.

To obtain a murder conviction, the state was required to show that Gallant intentionally or knowingly killed Andrews. To find him guilty of manslaughter, the jury had only to find that Gallant killed by acting negligently or recklessly.