Yes, this was a brutal story: a lawyer was asked by a state supreme court judge how fake citations and statutes made their way into the paperwork of an appeals case. The Georgia Supreme Court has an appeal for Hannah Payne before it. She’s a woman who shot and killed Kenneth Herring in 2019 in Clayton County following a vehicular incident. The district attorney’s office submitted its paperwork with a fake citation in it. They had until April 2 to explain, and as many suspected, it was due to the use of AI (via Fox5Atlanta):
An absolutely excruciating moment at the Georgia Supreme Court this week.
— Anna Bower (@AnnaBower) March 20, 2026
Justice Peterson pressed state attorney Deborah Leslie over her citations to cases that apparently don’t exist. pic.twitter.com/D9Ww7sYvBF
The Clayton County District Attorney has apologized to the Supreme Court of Georgia, after a prosecutor admitted to relying on artificial intelligence to write court briefings, which contained made-up legal citations.
"In my almost 30-year career as an attorney and 17 years as an elected official, I never imagined a situation where I would do what I am doing now," wrote DA Tasha Mosley, in a letter obtained by FOX 5's Rob DiRienzo.
Supreme Court of Georgia Chief Justice Nels Peterson said one of Mosley's prosecutors, Deborah Leslie, filed an argument with at least five citations to cases that don't exist, and at least five more citations to cases that do not support the proposition for which they're cited.
Leslie, who initially claimed the filing was altered, later admitted to using AI.
[…]
It's just the latest example of attorneys relying too much on artificial intelligence, and getting caught red-handed.
"We've seen judges reprimand them," said Tom Church, a metro Atlanta trial attorney. "We haven't seen it on this kind of platform, you know, with the Supreme Court, and we haven't seen it from a prosecutor."
Church says the use of AI in high-level legal proceedings carries significant professional responsibility.
You think, man?
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