In November 2021, 37-year-old Christopher Pelkey was shot and killed in a road rage incident in Arizona. Three years later, he spoke directly to his killer, Gabriel Horcasitas, during his sentencing hearing. How? Through AI. Pelkey’s sister, Stacey Wales, exclusively shares with In Touch why she wanted her late brother to be able to deliver his own statement at the hearing.

“I thought, ‘Well, how can we make this a production that will really hit the judge from all angles,’” Wales tells In Touch Investigates’ Kristin Thorne.

Wales said that she “kept hearing” Pelkey’s voice “and his ethos of forgiveness and loving God and loving people,” and she knew she had to let him speak for himself. She wrote what she believed her brother would say to his killer and had her husband make an AI avatar in Pelkey’s likeness.

Horcasitas, 54, shot Pelkey at a red light in Chandler, Arizona, on November 13, 2021. In 2023, he was found not guilty on a murder charge and guilty on a lesser charge of manslaughter, according to USA Today. However, a new trial was ordered due to a prosecutor’s failure to disclose exculpatory evidence. During the new trial this March, Horcasitas pleaded guilty to reckless endangerment and was found guilty of manslaughter.

During Horcasitas’ sentencing hearing in early May, Pelkey appeared in an AI video to address his killer and offer forgiveness.

“Just to be clear for everyone seeing this, I am a version of Chris Pelkey, recreated through AI that uses my picture and my voice profile. To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man who shot me, it is a shame we encountered each other that day in those circumstances,” the AI version of Pelkey, wearing a gray baseball cap and a green zip-up hoodie, said. “In another life, we probably could have been friends.”

The video continued, “I believe in forgiveness, and a God who forgives. I always have and I still do.”

Wales tells In Touch that the video seemed to impact many people in the room, as she heard “tears and sniffles.”

“So I was like, ‘OK, there’s an emotional response to this,’” she says, adding that her other brother, who was unaware that this would be happening, gave her a “huge hug.”

“He whispered in my ear, ‘Thank you so much. Well done. That was incredible,” she adds.

As for Horcasitas, Wales says she was unable to see his reaction in person. However, she was able to watch video footage from the hearing and noticed an apparent change in Horcasitas’ body language when the AI version of Pelkey mentioned his name.

“The whole day, his gaze was far off in the distance, detached and not reacting or listening to anything that anybody said,” Wales explains. “But when Chris’ video got up there, he still didn’t flinch, until it got to the part where Chris says, ‘To Gabriel Horcasitas, the man that shot me,’ and finally, his gaze flinched, and he looked at it and he watched it for that paragraph. He didn’t react further than that, but I knew that it reached him.”

Judge Todd Lang was also affected by the AI video.

“I loved that AI, thank you for that. As angry as you are, as justifiably angry as the family is, I heard the forgiveness,” he said during the hearing, according to BBC. “I feel that that was genuine.”

Lang sentenced Horcasitas to 10 and a half years in prison, and he will serve 85 percent of that, his lawyer, Jason Lamm, told USA Today in May. Horcasitas’ lawyer also appealed the sentence and challenged the use of AI in the courtroom, arguing that the video may have swayed the judge’s decision to give his client more than 10 years in prison.