Arizona court refuses to downgrade opinion in Milke case

PHOENIX (AP) - The Arizona Supreme Court is refusing to downgrade a lower court's decision in the case of an Arizona woman freed after spending 22 years in death row in her son's killing.

The Supreme Court on Tuesday rejected a prosecution request to reconsider publication of the Court of Appeals' opinion in Debra Milke's case.

Downgrading the published opinion to a memorandum decision wouldn't have affected Milke's case but would have meant the decision wouldn't be a legal precedent for other cases.

Milke's case in the 1989 killing of her son was recently dismissed as a result of a federal court's ruling that prosecutors failed to disclose a history of misconduct by an investigator, now-retired Phoenix police Detective Armando Saldate.

Prosecutors had sought to retry Milke but Arizona courts rejected that bid.