State v. Wilcox

NOTICE: NOT FOR OFFICIAL PUBLICATION.
UNDER ARIZONA RULE OF THE SUPREME COURT 111(c), THIS DECISION IS NOT PRECEDENTIAL
AND MAY BE CITED ONLY AS AUTHORIZED BY RULE.

IN THE
ARIZONA COURT OF APPEALS
DIVISION ONE

STATE OF ARIZONA, Appellee,

v.

JUSTIN WELLINGTON WILCOX, Appellant.

No. 1 CA-CR 25-0371

FILED 09-15-2026

Appeal from the Superior Court in Mohave County
No. CR-2024-01240
The Honorable Billy K. Sipe Jr., Judge Pro Tempore

AFFIRMED

COUNSEL

Arizona Attorney General’s Office, Phoenix
By Joseph E. Begun
Counsel for Appellee

Jill L. Evans Attorney at Law, Flagstaff
By Jill L. Evans
Counsel for Appellant

STATE v. WILCOX
Decision of the Court

MEMORANDUM DECISION

Judge Veronika Fabian delivered the decision of the Court, in which
Presiding Judge Andrew M. Jacobs and Judge Daniel J. Kiley joined.

F A B I A N, Judge:

¶1 Justin Wilcox appeals his conviction for manslaughter,
alleging violations of the Confrontation Clause under both the U.S. and
Arizona Constitutions. The Confrontation Clause protects a defendant’s
right to cross-examine those who testify against him at trial. But it reaches
only statements offered for their truth. Wilcox shot and killed his brother.
His defense was that he believed his brother was an intruder, a story he told
to a detective in two recorded interviews. The detective did not testify at
trial, yet the jury heard both recordings. Because the detective’s half of the
conversation was offered to make sense of Wilcox’s half, and not to prove
the truth of anything the detective said, the Confrontation Clause is not
implicated. We affirm.

FACTUAL AND PROCEDURAL BACKGROUND

¶2 Justin Wilcox and his wife lived with Justin’s brother in a
house in Lake Havasu City. Wilcox’s brother had moved in about a year
and a half before the shooting.

¶3 One day in October 2024, the two brothers had been drinking
together for several hours. At some point late in the evening, Wilcox told
his brother he was going to bed. Wilcox knew his brother was still in the
house at that point. Later, Wilcox woke up to a sound outside his back door.
Two weeks earlier he had called the police about someone in a neighbor’s
yard, and he thought squatters might be outside again. So, Wilcox took the
loaded AK-47 rifle he kept in his bedroom and went out to look. He did not
turn on the patio light and did not put on his glasses.

¶4 It was dark outside and Wilcox saw someone standing at the
edge of the patio near a hot tub. He told the person to get on the ground but
the person did not do so and did not say anything. When the person moved
towards him, Wilcox fired once. Only then, Wilcox claimed, did he realize
the person was his brother. Wilcox began CPR and called 911 at 10:55 p.m.,
but his brother eventually died from the gunshot wound. Wilcox’s blood

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alcohol concentration, from blood drawn at 2:16 a.m., was 0.264. His
brother’s blood alcohol concentration, from a blood sample taken in
preparation for the autopsy, was 0.187.

¶5 A detective interviewed Wilcox twice on video shortly after
the shooting. By the time of trial, the detective was on leave after an
unrelated incident in which he was shot at while investigating a homicide
suspect. He was unavailable to both sides, for a pretrial interview and for
testimony at trial.

¶6 Before trial, the State moved to admit both recordings and
proposed to lay foundation through another officer. Wilcox did not object
to the admissibility of the first interview, provided that the State laid the
proper foundation. However, he did object to statements the detective
made during the second interview, invoking the Confrontation Clause and
Arizona Rules of Evidence 401, 403, 602, 701, and 801 through 807. He asked
the court to exclude the detective’s statement. He did not ask for redactions
or a limiting instruction.

¶7 Six exchanges from the second interview remain at issue on
appeal:

1) The detective asked why Wilcox had not turned on the patio light
and suggested most people would rather see what is outside than
walk into the dark. Wilcox responded that he just did not think about
the lights.

2) The detective said the entry and exit wounds made it appear Wilcox
had fired from a higher position, and he asked whether the person
outside had been sitting or standing. Wilcox responded that the
person was standing.

3) The detective said it looked as though someone (possibly Wilcox’s
brother) had been drinking at the backyard table, noting there was a
jar of peach moonshine on the table still cold to the touch, and asked
Wilcox to go back over his account of what he and his brother did
that evening. Wilcox responded that he did not think his brother
could have been outside drinking and that the jar of moonshine had
been there for three days.

4) The detective said he had looked into Wilcox’s brother’s history,
mentioned a report of a stabbing and a short temper, said a few
things about Wilcox’s account not matching what he saw at the
scene, and asked whether the brothers had fought. Wilcox

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responded that there was no fighting that day, but he had pressed
his brother about why it had taken so long to come back to pick up
Wilcox from the hospital where he was visiting his wife.

5) The detective again asked Wilcox if he had an altercation with his
brother after they had been drinking, since some people cannot
handle their liquor. Wilcox replied that he was not someone prone
to fighting after drinking and again denied fighting with his brother.

6) The detective described a broken plate and a fork on the kitchen floor
before asking again about an argument. Wilcox repeatedly denied
there had been an altercation.

¶8 The superior court found the recording was admissible,
explaining the statements were not hearsay because they were not offered
for their truth. The court added that it would not permit the State to argue
that a fact was established because the detective said it in a question. Wilcox
then moved for reconsideration on confrontation grounds, which the court
denied. When asked whether either side wanted instructions beyond the
standard set, defense counsel said no.

¶9 The recordings were played at trial. Wilcox did not testify, but
he argued self-defense, and the court instructed the jury on justification.
The jury convicted him of manslaughter and found the offense dangerous.
The court imposed the presumptive term of 10.5 years. Wilcox timely
appealed.

¶10 We have jurisdiction under Article VI, Section 9 of the
Arizona Constitution and A.R.S. §§ 12-120.21(A)(1), 13-4031, and
13-4033(A)(1).

DISCUSSION

I. The Detective’s Statements Were Not Offered for Their Truth, So
Admitting Them Did Not Violate the Confrontation Clause.

¶11 We review a Confrontation Clause challenge de novo. State v.
Forde, 233 Ariz. 543, 564 ¶ 79 (2014). The Arizona Constitution’s version of
the Confrontation Clause is coextensive with the U.S. Constitution. See State
v. Aragon, 258 Ariz. 218, 220 ¶ 10 (App. 2024). The Clause directs that “[i]n
all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right . . . to be
confronted with the witnesses against him.” U.S. Const. amend. VI. It
generally bars admission of an absent witness’s out-of-court statements
unless the defendant had a prior chance to cross-examine the witness. See

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Smith v. Arizona, 602 U.S. 779, 784 (2024). However, the Clause only reaches
an out-of-court statement if it is both hearsay and testimonial. Id. at 784-85.
Because the detective’s statements were not offered to prove the truth of the
matter asserted, they were not hearsay and thus not barred by the
Confrontation Clause.

¶12 A statement is hearsay only if a party offers it to prove the
truth of what it asserts. Ariz. R. Evid. 801(c); see Smith, 602 U.S. at 785. In
determining whether a statement is hearsay for the purposes of the
Confrontation Clause, a court does not “accept [the proponent’s]
nonhearsay label at face value.” Smith, 602 U.S. at 794 (citation modified). It
independently analyzes whether the out-of-court statement was offered for
its truth, which means identifying the role or purpose the statement served
at trial. Id. at 793-94.

¶13 Arizona courts have repeatedly held that statements by law
enforcement officers in police interviews are not hearsay when they are
offered for the purpose of explaining the defendant’s answers. See State v.
Allen, 253 Ariz. 306, 330 ¶¶ 36, 38 (2022) (detective’s accusations were not
testimonial hearsay when made to elicit a response from the defendant and
provided necessary context for defendant’s statements); State v. Boggs, 218
Ariz. 325, 334 ¶ 35 (2008) (questions as part of an interrogation were
“admissible at least for the limited purpose of showing the context of the
interrogation”); see also State v. Martin, 225 Ariz. 162, 166–67 ¶ 20 (App.
2010) (a forensic interviewer’s questions and requests for clarification were
not hearsay because they only supplied context for the victim’s statements).
Juries permitted to hear a taped confession are also permitted to hear the
questions the police asked. State v. Huerstel, 206 Ariz. 93, 107 ¶ 65 (2003),
abrogated on other grounds by Crawford v. Washington, 541 U.S. 36 (2004).

¶14 Here the recordings were admissible in their entirety because
Wilcox’s answers were relevant, and the detective’s side of the conversation
was offered to make those answers intelligible. Consider the patio light
exchange. Wilcox’s answer, that “I did not even think about it,” would
mean nothing to the jury on its own. It only makes sense once the jury
knows he was responding to the detective’s concerns about walking into a
dark yard without first reaching for a light switch a few feet away.

¶15 The other exchanges work the same way. The wound-path
exchange produced Wilcox’s description of where his brother stood and
how he moved. The moonshine exchange produced his account of when
and where the brothers drank, when he went to bed, and his knowledge of
whether his brother was still at the house when he went to bed. The

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exchanges about drinking earlier in the day with his brother, his brother’s
history, and the broken plate produced his repeated denials of fighting after
drinking and his explanation of why his brother was living with him. The
jury’s acceptance of Wilcox’s answers did not depend on the detective’s
statements being true, so the challenged statements were not offered for
their truth. See Smith, 602 U.S. at 795-96. Instead, for each exchange,
Wilcox’s answer was presented for its truth while the detective’s statements
and questions provided the contextual frame.

¶16 Wilcox argues that his case is distinguishable from the
precedent we cite above because in those cases the law enforcement officer
actually testified at trial, which allowed the jury to learn that statements
made as interrogation techniques should not be accepted as facts. True, the
detective did not testify, but that distinction does not make his statements
during the interview hearsay.

¶17 What matters for a hearsay analysis is whether the challenged
statements were offered for their truth, not whether the detective testified
or the jury understood a detective was using permissible interrogation
techniques. See Smith, 602 U.S. at 793-94; Allen, 253 Ariz. at 330 ¶ 36. As we
explained above, see supra ¶¶ 14-15, the detective’s statements were not
offered for their truth.

¶18 Wilcox also points to the risk that the jury would treat the
detective’s words as established facts. He correctly notes that a limiting
instruction was likely justified to alleviate that risk. But he never asked for
one. Instead, he asked the court to exclude the statements “in their
entirety,” and told the court he wanted no instructions beyond the standard
set. A trial court does not commit error by failing to give a limiting
instruction the defendant did not request. See Allen, 253 Ariz. at 329 ¶ 33.

¶19 Because the challenged statements were not offered for the
truth of the matter asserted, they were not hearsay and their admission did
not violate the Confrontation Clause.

II. Wilcox’s Evidentiary Arguments Are Waived.

¶20 Wilcox also argues the statements were inadmissible under
Arizona Rules of Evidence 401, 602, and 701. He devotes three short
paragraphs of his opening brief to all three without material analysis or
support. Arguments raised without significant argument and supporting
authority are waived. See State v. Stefanovich, 232 Ariz. 154, 158 ¶ 16 (App.
2013).

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CONCLUSION

¶21 We affirm Wilcox’s conviction and sentence.

MATTHEW J. MARTIN • Clerk of the Court
FILED: JR

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