Pelkey’s sister and brother-in-law used the technology to recreate his image and voice likeness to “talk” to the courtroom about his life and the day he met Gabriel Paul Horcasitas, who shot him during a confrontation near Gilbert and Germann roads….
The AI video also included real video clips from videos taken while he was alive, along with some of his personality and humor, while showing a real photo he once took with an “old age” filter.
Arizona Court Allows Artificial Intelligence Victim Impact Statement That Allows Victim to “Speak” From the Grave
After finding that victim impact statements at the sentencing stage of a capital trial violate the Eighth Amendment in Booth v. Maryland, 482 U.S. 496 (1987), the Supreme Court changed course in Payne v. Tennessee, 501 U.S. 808 (1991), finding that a victim impact statement is admissible unless it “is so unduly prejudicial that it renders the trial fundamentally unfair.”
In 2008, the Supreme Court was asked to grant cert in Kelly v California, which consisted of two cases in which the victim impact statements contained photos and videos of the victim, music accompanying these images, and narration by loved ones. In dissenting from the denial of cert, Justice Stevens wrote
These videos are a far cry from the written victim impact evidence at issue in Booth and the brief oral testimony condoned in Payne. In their form, length, and scope, they vastly exceed the “quick glimpse” the Court’s majority contemplated when it overruled Booth in 1991. At the very least, the petitions now before us invite the Court to apply the standard announced in Payne, and to provide the lower courts with long-overdue guidance on the scope of admissible victim impact evidence. Having decided to tolerate the introduction of evidence that puts a heavy thumb on the prosecutor’s side of the scale in death cases, the Court has a duty to consider what reasonable limits should be placed on its use.
Now, with artificial intelligence, we have the first, and undoubtedly not the last, new type of victim impact statement: one from the victim “speaking” from the grave.
According to an article by ABC 15 in Arizona.
Christopher Pelkey was killed in a road rage incident in Chandler in 2021, but last month, artificial intelligence brought him back to life during his killer’s sentencing hearing.
It was the first time in Arizona judicial history — and possibly nationwide — that AI has been used to create a deceased victim’s own impact statement.
Specifically,
And so, we now have reason to revisit Justice Stevens’s comment about needing to place reasonable limits on victim impact statements to mediate against the heavy thumb on the prosecutor’s side of the scale in death cases that they can create. It feels to me like the use of AI to have the victim “speak” from the grave goes too far, and I’ll be interested to see how courts handle the issue going forward.
-CM