State of Arizona, Appellee v. Cory Deonn Morris, Appellant

Summary

The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Cory Morris's convictions for five first degree murders and his five death sentences. It held that independent evidence—drag marks, DNA matches, and the victims' belongings—established the corpus delicti of the Codman and Davis murders without proof of cause of death, that the jury commissioner's excusal of prospective jurors based on the neutral criterion of trial length violated no fair-cross-section or presence right, and that only one of five challenged prosecutorial incidents (singling out jurors and appealing to their sympathy) was misconduct, which was not fundamental error. Construing A.R.S. § 13-703.05 for the first time, the court held it must review every death sentence for abuse of discretion even absent defendant-raised challenges, upheld the prior-serious-offenses and especially-cruel aggravator findings and the death sentences, and rejected fourteen conceded constitutional attacks on Arizona's capital scheme.