Arizona appeals court tosses sentencing due to AI video

The Arizona Court of Appeals has ruled that Gabriel Paul Horcasitas must be resentenced following the 2021 shooting death of Christopher Pelkey. While the three-judge panel upheld Horcasitas’s manslaughter conviction, they overturned the original sentencing due to what they termed a “fundamental error” regarding the use of artificial intelligence in court.

During the initial proceedings, Pelkey’s family submitted an AI-generated video depicting the deceased victim forgiving his killer and addressing the court. The original judge, Todd F. Lang of Maricopa County Superior Court, accepted the video as “genuine,” stating that the victim was allowed to “speak from his heart.”

The appeals panel determined that the video improperly “erases the interpretive distance between the family’s belief about what the victim would have said and the victim’s own voice and opinions.” The case originated from a November 2021 incident in Chandler, where Horcasitas shot and killed Pelkey after a confrontation at a red light.