By admin 
PHOENIX — A Valley man accused of shooting and killing his ballerina wife in 2022 will not go to trial this month.
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Christopher Hoopes is charged with second-degree murder. Tempe police say he shot and killed his 25-year-old ballerina wife in the middle of the night at their Tempe home. She was a dancer for Ballet Arizona.
The trial was originally scheduled for July, but prosecutors now say the trial likely won’t happen until 2027. They say the case is complex. Hoopes also changed defense attorneys, which also led to delays.
At a recent court hearing, Maricopa County Judge Monica Edelstein said she anticipates the trial could be up to two months long with multiple defense witnesses.
“It’s a significant case on both sides,” she said in court.
ABC15 has covered this case extensively from the beginning.
Hoopes has pleaded not guilty. As ABC15 has previously reported, court records show he may use an unusual defense called “involuntary intoxication,” where he may claim medication he was taking made him unaware of his actions that night.
Body camera video from Tempe police that night shows Hoopes telling officers who responded to his home that he was asleep for three hours. He says he woke up startled and grabbed his gun out of his nightstand.
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“It was like a dream. I don’t know. Like, I just woke up in a panic,” he told the officer.
He then told the officer he grabbed the gun, stood up, and shot.
“I fired at my wife.”
“Then I realized it was her.”
The police officer asks Hoopes how many times he shot.
“I think three times,” he says.
Hoopes goes on to say:
“At first, when I shot her, I didn’t, I thought it was someone else.”
At his recent court hearing, prosecutors said they anticipate hiring experts of their own based on the experts Hoopes plans to use in his defense.
“I do not believe this case can be tried before February,” Frankie Grimsman, a deputy county attorney in the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office, told the judge.
She said any trial date that they pick is “not realistic at this time.”
Grimsman told the judge that prosecutors are not making a plea offer in this case, however, “we’re always willing to negotiate. But I need to evaluate what their experts are saying.”
Email ABC15 Reporter Anne Ryman at [email protected], call her at 602-685-6345, or connect on X.
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