Arizona court vacates ten-and-a-half-year sentence over AI-generated victim video

The Arizona Court of Appeals vacated Gabriel Paul Horcasitas's 10-and-a-half-year manslaughter sentence for the 2021 shooting of Christopher Pelkey, ruling that an AI-generated victim statement video played at the sentencing hearing was unreliable. The three-judge panel found that the video did not record real events but instead presented the victim's sister's imagination as the victim's own thoughts and statements. Pelkey's family used voice recordings, videos, and photos to reconstruct his likeness, allowing an AI version of Pelkey to speak at the May 2025 sentencing hearing, after nine relatives and friends had already testified. Horcasitas's defense attorney argued that Judge Todd Lang's admission of the AI evidence violated due process and that the defendant had no meaningful opportunity to rebut the video's content; the prosecution said the judge did not sentence based on it. The victim's sister, Stacey Wales, expressed disappointment that the video was cited as a reason for the reversal, saying its only purpose was to show the judge her brother's humanity. The court upheld the conviction and remanded the case for resentencing.