Arizona: a sentence overturned because the judge had been swayed by an AI video of the deceased victim

The Court of Appeal upheld the conviction for manslaughter but ordered a new sentencing hearing: the victim’s avatar was expressing his sister’s views, not his own.

The Arizona Court of Appeals has overturned the ten-and-a-half-year prison sentence imposed on Gabriel Paul Horcasitas, who was convicted of manslaughter for shooting Christopher Pelkey during a traffic altercation in Chandler in November 2021. The conviction itself stands, but the case goes back to Maricopa County Superior Court for a new sentencing hearing.

An avatar that forgave the defendant

At the initial hearing, the victim's family released an AI-generated video based on the image and a recording by Christopher Pelkey, on a text written by his sister Stacey Wales. The deceased appeared to forgive the shooter. Judge Todd Lang said he "loved" the footage, which he said was authentic and indicative of the victim's character, before handing down the maximum sentence.

For the appeals court, the video crossed a line: it erases the distance between what the family believes the victim would have said and what she actually thought, by presenting as her word what is her sister's imagination. The weight given by the judge to this content made the proceedings fundamentally unfair to the defendant, a decision that should serve as a benchmark for courts confronted with victim impact statements recreated by AI.