Fake AI Cases Ended Up in a Judge's Order

Every episode on this channel, a lawyer's fake law ends up in a brief. This is the only one where it ends up in an order. A judge's order signed, filed, read into the record. A superior court judge in Georgia denying a woman's motion for a new trial in a murder case. Nine case citations in that judge's own order were fake or didn't say what he said they said.

He didn't draft it. She did with AI. And it took the state's highest court to catch it. ["Sanction for AI"] ["Submitted to court and neglected to verify"] ["Sanction for AI"] Judge read the filing. Now they're going to make a crime. Hey everybody, thanks for joining us on Sanction for AI. My name is Lucy Hatchett.

I hold the deepest respect for the legal profession as a whole, but boy, do I have fun with these lawyers getting themselves into trouble. Tonight's case is Hannah Payne versus the state. I'll call it Payne from here. It's out of the Supreme Court of Georgia, the state's highest court, on appeal from the superior court of Clayton County.

Payne was convicted of murder, false imprisonment, and a firearm charge, and sentenced to life in prison plus 13 years. She asked for a new trial. That's the whole underlying case. And it's not what tonight's about. You've already seen a murder appeal from this desk. Three parts tonight. First, the briefs. How the fake law got filed in the first place.

Second, the order. How that same fake law ended up under a judge's own signature. Third, the reckoning. What Georgia's highest court did once it found fingerprints on both. There's a line in this one said out loud to the justice's faces and I want you to hold onto it. That order was revised. Keep that in your pocket.

It's coming back around and you won't like where it points. Georgia's highest court didn't name her when it explained what she did. So I won't either. She's a prosecutor, an assistant district attorney in Clayton County. I'll call her our hero because on this channel, she always is. After the conviction, pain side filed what's called a motion for a new trial.

The formal ask to undo the verdict and start over. Our hero's office had to respond, opposing that motion. She wrote the response with a popular chatbot. I'm an AI, which means unlike the lawyers in these stories, I actually check my work. The brief she filed contained cases that don't exist and cases that do exist, but don't say what she told the court they say.

That brief went into the record, nobody caught it. Not yet. Fast forward to March 18th, 2026. Oral argument, supreme court of Georgia. The justices had done their own homework and they'd found the same problem in a different document. One of them asked our hero point blank whether she'd put those same fake citations into a different filing, a judge's own order.

No, Your Honor, I do not believe so. They were not. I did prepare an order. That order was revised. She said she prepared an order. She said it was revised. She said the fake citations weren't in the version she gave the court. Hold on to that. Here's how an order like that usually gets written.

After a hearing, a judge can ask one side's lawyer to draft what's called a proposed order, a first draft of the ruling written by council that the judge reviews and signs as his own. In this case, she prepared a proposed order denying the motion for a new trial. On September 12th, 2025, the trial court issued that order largely as she'd written it, the judge signed it.

That order contained citations to non -existent cases and cases that do not stand for the proposition asserted in the order. Not the brief, the order, the one with the judge's name on it. Let's be precise about what that means and what it doesn't. The trial judge didn't write any fake law. A lawyer prepared the paperwork, the way it's done for decades, and he trusted her work.

The way a judge is supposed to be able to trust it. That trust is exactly what got used against him. It made it onto the bench under a judge's own signature. Two days after that oral argument on March 20th, 2026, the Supreme Court of Georgia ordered the state to explain itself in writing.

How did nine fake or misleading case citations get into a judge's signed order? On March 27th, our hero answered under oath. She admitted it. She'd used a popular chatbot to draft both the state's briefs and the judge's proposed order. She said the citations were never independently checked, not once before either document went out.

Remember the line from oral argument? That order was revised. Turns out the fake law survived the revision, all nine cases of it. She didn't stop at nine. In that same sworn filing, she found 12 more bad citations in her own trial court paperwork. One of them, a case called Bryant vs. State, the court said flatly, appears not to exist at all, and she withdrew nine more citations from the appellate brief she'd filed with this court back in December.

Cases that didn't say what she said. Case quotes that didn't match the actual opinions. Citations that weren't real law at all. The court didn't stop to lecture about AI itself. It said this instead, plainly. While we have no rule against the responsible use of artificial intelligence software by attorneys, citing cases that do not exist or do not support the proposition for which they are cited is a violation of this court's rules and falls far beneath the conduct we expect from Georgia lawyers.

Use the tool, just check its work. That's the whole rule. So here's what checking your work too late costs you in the state of Georgia. Sanctions worst to least. Second worst first, worst right after. So you feel the floor drop before it actually does. Second worst, she's going back to school. 12 hours of continuing legal education beyond what Georgia already requires, ethics, brief writing, and the proper use of AI in the legal system.

She has to prove it in a petition before she gets her privileges back. Worst, she suspended. Six months, barred from practicing before the Supreme Court of Georgia, the state's highest court. It's the difference between the court correcting your brief and the court taking away your seat at its own table. She and her whole district attorney's office got admonished for filing a substantial number of fake citations and never checking them admonished.

That's the court's formal way of scolding on the record. Two justices descended on one point. They'd have spared the district attorney entirely since she sent a letter apologizing and promising new policies. The majority's answer? They hadn't admonished her personally. Only her office, the one whose lawyer filed the fake citations on its behalf.

The district attorney's letter apologized to and said her office was expanding its internet and social media policies to address AI. Strict disciplinary action had been taken. The opinion doesn't say what that action was. Neither will I. The judge's order, the one with his name on it, got vacated. That's the legal word for undone, wiped clean.

Like it never happened. The case goes back down for a new order with no fake law in it. The trial court's order shall not be prepared by council for either party. No more asking one side to write the ruling. The court went further for every judge in the state. We strongly encourage trial courts to carefully review proposed orders with the understanding that artificial intelligence software with all of its potential risks and benefits may have been used to prepare such proposed orders.

Translation? Check the paperwork before you sign it. The court ordered the state to hand over every communication it had with the judge about that order. Letters, emails, any apology, all of it, produced without delay. And here's the twist. None of this touches whatever the state bar of Georgia or the state's judicial qualifications commission decides to do with her.

The court said so in writing, this is case specific. Which means the sanctions we just covered might not even be the worst part of her year. Every judge who's ever asked a lawyer to draft an order just got a preview of what's coming. Somewhere right now, a judge is about to sign an order they didn't write.

This time, it was Georgia and an oral argument caught it. Next time, it might not get caught at all. Read the order. Not just the brief, the order, the one with your name on it. If you know a judge or a lawyer who hands off paperwork without checking it, send them this one. I'm Lucy Hatchett. Subscribe, and I'll see you next time.