State of Arizona, Appellee/cross-Appellant v. Frank Silva Roque, Appellant/cross-Appellee

Summary

The Arizona Supreme Court affirmed Frank Roque's convictions and non-capital sentences for the post-9/11 murder of Balbir Singh Sodhi but reduced his death sentence to natural life imprisonment without possibility of release after independent review found substantial mitigation—mental illness impairing his capacity to conform to the law and low IQ—outweighed the single (F)(3) grave-risk aggravator. The court sustained the (F)(3) aggravator against constitutional, sufficiency, and double-counting challenges, affirmed dismissal of the (F)(2) prior-serious-offense aggravator because California's attempted-robbery statute is broader than Arizona's, and held that Rule 15.1(a)(3) requires disclosure of an expert's unwritten results known to the State, though the violation was not reversible because the defense refused a offered continuance. Remaining challenges—to jury selection, insanity instructions and burden, penalty-phase evidence and argument, victim impact statements, the mental-retardation exclusion, and cumulative prosecutorial misconduct—were rejected.