(Hi!
)
1. About additional review after her COA appeal is denied, which I'm 100% certain it will be:
NY Victoria is right. And wrong.
There is no review step/opportunity between a COA's ruling and moving on to the AZ Supreme Court, if the convicted chooses to do so if & after the COA upholds a guilty verdict.
The killer has the legal right to ask the AZ Supreme Court to review her case. But. That court has zero obligation to do so & very very rarely accepts such requests.
That is, UNLESS there is some larger legal issue in the case/trial they believe needs clarification (typically a result of conflicting rulings by lower courts), or, the Court believes the case presents them an opportunity to weigh in on what they think is a very significant and novel legal issue.
The only issue I can imagine the AZSC could possibly consider significant enough to weigh in on- even theoretically, and the odds are extremely slim to barely none, would relate to the largely rhetorical question the COA asked during oral arguments on the killer's appeal.
The question asked by panel J's lead COA judge: what if anything can courts do if evidence of guilt presented at trial is so overwhelming as to negate the possibility (case law, precedent) of overturning a verdict based on prosecutorial misconduct, and the prosecutor, knowing this, takes advantage of this to go over the line?
Best guess is the AZSC won't weigh in, and will turn down the killer's request to be heard, and forthwith .
After killer goes to the AZSC, if she does, she has one last chance, and I'm pretty sure she's believed for years it's her best and only chance for a win: to file for post conviction relief (PCR).
I've written about this here many times, so a very short summary: PCR is the first and only opportunity to argue ineffective counsel and/or new exonerating evidence that wasn't & couldn't have been known at trial.
But. Fewer than 5% of PCR requests are granted, in part because these requests go to the very same trial judge who oversaw the trial in which the requesting defendant was convicted.
2. When will the COA rule? There's no way of knowing, sorry. There isn't even much point in looking at the average time the COA appeals review panels take to issue a ruling.
The only potential guideposts: the reviewing judges typically decide on a ruling on the same day of oral arguments (if there are any); if orals, they are held on the same day as their scheduled day of deliberations.
So....the COA almost certainly has already made their decision. What always takes a long time, and in this case, a definitely longer then usual amount of time, is the lead judge's work of drafting the decision, giving it to the other 2 judges for edits & review, then the lead judge incorporating those edits/reasoning/dissents, if any, and writing up a final decision.
I know it feels like a very long time since orals, but even in routine Court time it hasn't been that long, and the killer's case, for all the wrong reasons and having nothing at all to do with her guilt and clean conviction, is anything but.