An Arizona appeals court has ruled that a judge should not have relied on an AI-made video of a dead man speaking when he sentenced the man who shot him. On Wednesday, Sept. 30, the Arizona Court of Appeals upheld Gabriel Paul Horcasitas's manslaughter conviction for shooting and killing Christopher Pelkey in a 2021 road rage confrontation in Chandler, a suburb of Phoenix, according to a news report. But it threw out his 10.5-year sentence and ordered a new sentencing hearing, "because the AI video was not reliable." The court said no Arizona case had dealt with an AI-made likeness of a victim before.
Arizona's constitution gives crime victims the right to be heard at sentencing. They do not have to share what they will say in advance, they do not speak under oath, and the defense cannot cross-examine them. At the May 2025 hearing, after family and friends had spoken, the family played a video that used Pelkey's picture and voice to show him talking to the court. The family built it from his voice recordings, videos and photos, according to a news report. In it, the AI Pelkey called itself "a true representation" of who he was and told Horcasitas, "I believe in forgiveness and in God who forgives."
Maricopa County Superior Court Judge Todd Lang said "I loved that AI," called it "genuine," and noted, "I didn't hear him asking for the maximum sentence." He then gave Horcasitas 10.5 years, the most the law allowed in this case and more than the 9 years prosecutors had asked for.
Judges can hear almost anything at sentencing, but the appeals court said what they rely on must be at least minimally reliable, because a defendant has a right to be sentenced on accurate information. Arizona's courts have also warned that some material shown by victims can be so unfairly persuasive that it makes a sentencing unfair. The three appeals judges said this video crossed that line. Unlike a photo or recording of a real moment, it did not show anything that had happened. Instead, they wrote, it showed "a depiction of the victim and his thoughts created from the imaginings of the victim's sister," yet presented them as his own words. The video opened by saying it had been made with AI, but the judges wrote, "No disclaimer could cure that error." Clips of the real Pelkey inside the video were allowed.
The state had argued the video was reliable because Pelkey and his sister were close and its message matched what he had written about his own beliefs, which his brother read aloud at the hearing. Because Horcasitas's lawyer did not object at the hearing, the appeals court could overturn the sentence only for a mistake serious enough to make the hearing fundamentally unfair. It found this was one, saying that although it could not tell exactly how much the video weighed, "there is no question it played a role."
Pelkey's sister, Stacey Wales, said her only goal was to help the judge see her brother as a person, according to a news report, and she said the decision felt unfair: "Where are the rights for the victim?" She said the family will keep letting his voice be heard in whatever form the courts allow. The Maricopa County Attorney's Office said in a statement, according to the same report, that its lawyers knew the family would speak but did not know what form it would take.
Horcasitas will now be sentenced again, and it is not yet clear what term he will get. At the new hearing the family can still speak, and the court said real footage of Pelkey was allowed. It is not yet clear whether the state will ask Arizona's Supreme Court to review the decision, or how courts in other states will treat AI-made videos of victims.