Attorney AI use
Payne v. State
Unverified AI citations migrated from a prosecutor’s papers into a proposed judicial order and then into the appeal.
Prosecutor suspended01
Case background
Material facts
In a murder case resulting in a sentence of life plus 13 years, an assistant district attorney used AI to draft an opposition to a motion for new trial and a proposed order. The filings contained nonexistent cases and real cases that did not support the propositions asserted. The trial court adopted several of those errors in its order denying a new trial, and additional inaccurate authorities appeared on appeal.
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The decision
The court’s ruling
The Georgia Supreme Court suspended the lawyer from practice before that court for six months, required 12 additional CLE hours, and admonished the prosecuting office. The court explained that the filings had “sidetracked [it] from [its] obligation of resolving the merits of Payne’s appeal” and that it instead “had to devote significant time and resources to the discovery of this misconduct and deciding what to do about it.” (Slip op. at 1.) It vacated the order denying a new trial and directed the trial court to prepare a new order without fictitious or misattributed citations. Neither party’s counsel could prepare the replacement order.
Why it matters
What the decision means
Counsel’s error became the court’s error because the proposed order was adopted. Proposed orders require the same source verification as briefs, and judges must review them independently before signing.
Primary reading