State of Arizona v. Thomas Michael Riley

Summary

The court affirmed Riley’s convictions and death sentence, rejecting challenges concerning counsel substitution, jury selection, evidentiary rulings, jury instructions, aggravating factors, accomplice-liability arguments, and prosecutorial misconduct. It held that the trial court did not abuse its discretion in denying new counsel, that any preserved or unpreserved errors were either absent, nonfundamental, or harmless, and that the challenged capital-sentencing instructions sufficiently narrowed the aggravators. The supplied opinion text ends while addressing Riley’s parole-ineligibility-instruction claim, so no conclusion on that claim is stated in the available text.