Inside the room — how persuasion landed
By multiple accounts, Judge Lang watched intently. The gallery felt it. Wales’ teenage son told her he “needed to hear from Uncle Chris one last time.” None of that is improper; victim healing is a legitimate purpose of allocution. But judges also must police their own minds. That’s the paradox of modern sentencing: the system invites emotion into the room then asks the decision-maker to firewall it from the legal calculus.
As a legal analyst who’s sat through more sentencing hearings than I can count, I’ll tell you straight — everyone thinks they’re immune to persuasive tech. No one is. That’s why procedure exists.
“Give me disclosure, and I can give you due process,” a retired federal judge told me years ago. It still applies, especially here.
The due-process rub the defense is pushing
Arizona requires notice to use statutory aggravators. In this case, the state did not file aggravation. If the court weighed the avatar’s sentiments as functional aggravation — even subconsciously — the remedy could be resentencing. The state will counter that the term was within the presumptive range and supported by mitigators and allocution; the defense will argue the record shows mitigating factors were found but neutralized by improper emotional weight placed on the AI video. Appellate courts don’t often reverse within-range sentences, but novel formats can force a closer look at the line between being heard and being prejudiced.
