United States v. Farris
Episode 6
The case
The mitigation case. The Sixth Circuit acknowledged this lawyer's candor and his clean 40-year disciplinary record, and sanctioned him anyway. Farris is the standing answer to the hope that honesty after the fact cures an unverified filing: it shapes the sanction's form, not whether there is one. And because this was a criminal appeal, the unverified briefs were filed in a case where a person's liberty was the subject.
What happened
Counsel used a generative AI platform to draft two briefs in a federal criminal appeal. The briefs contained fabricated quotations attributed to real cases and misrepresentations of those cases' holdings.
The rule and the sanction
The court found "inexcusable transgressions" despite the candor and the clean record. The lawyer was removed from the case, denied all Criminal Justice Act compensation for his work on the appeal, and referred to multiple judicial and bar authorities. There is no fine in this sanction; the court took the case and the fee instead.
How it could have been avoided
In a criminal appeal, AI output is an unverified first draft and nothing more. Confirm that every quotation appears verbatim in the cited opinion and that every case supports the holding claimed for it, before anything is filed over your signature.
Watch the episode
This case is covered in Episode 6: Lawyer Admits Filing Fake AI Cases, Still Sanctioned (Ep 6) (watch on YouTube).