04 November 2010 :

Cochise County Superior Court Judge Wallace R. Hoggatt vacated the death sentence of Kyle Sharp, 40, white. Sharp was sentenced to death on April 7, 1997 for the July 1, 1995 murder of Judith Coughlin. Ruling on the defendant’s appeal in State of Arizona v. Kyle David Sharp, Judge Hoggatt cited the work of private investigators as “instrumental in identifying and locating the witnesses...who testified concerning the horrific abuse...inflicted upon Kyle Sharp over the course of many years when he was a child....” The investigative team located and interviewed dozens of key witnesses whom Sharp’s previous attorneys failed to present during his sentencing in the Arizona Superior Court. These witnesses included several members of Sharp’s fractured family, his high school art teacher, and a medical doctor and a psychiatrist, both of whom treated Sharp for physical and emotional abuse sustained during childhood.