• joshchandra@midwest.social
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      1 day ago

      Perhaps; it seemed like they knew the decedent well enough to know that he would appreciate this, from everything that the article says. With that said, I also won’t be surprised if templates for wills or living trusts add a no-duplication statement by default over the coming years.

      • turmacar@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        If my family hired an actor to impersonate me at my killer’s trial and give a prepared speech about how I felt about the situation it would be thrown out of court.

        If my family hired a cartoonist or movie studio to create a moving scene with my face recreated by digital artists and a professional voice actor to talk about my forgiveness for my death, it would be thrown out of court.

        That they used a generative program to do it and the Judge allowed the video to influence the sentence as if it were a statement by the deceased is deeply troubling.

        • joshchandra@midwest.social
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          11 hours ago

          Apparently, it was required to be allowed in that state:

          Reading a bit more, during the sentencing phase in that state people making victim impact statements can choose their format for expression, and it’s entirely allowed to make statements about what other people would say. So the judge didn’t actually have grounds to deny it.
          No jury during that phase, so it’s just the judge listening to free form requests in both directions.

          It’s gross, but the rules very much allow the sister to make a statement about what she believes her brother would have wanted to say, in whatever format she wanted.

          From: https://sh.itjust.works/comment/18471175

          influence the sentence

          From what I’ve seen, to be fair, judges’ decisions have varied wildly regardless, sadly, and sentences should be more standardized. I wonder what it would’ve been otherwise.