Frankie Johnson, a man imprisoned at William E. Donaldson prison outside of Birmingham, Alabama, said he was stabbed about 20 times in less than a year and a half.
In December 2019, Johnson said he was stabbed “at least nine times” in his residential unit. In March 2020, officers handcuffed him to a desk after a group therapy meeting and left the unit, after which another prisoner came in and stabbed him five times.
In November of the same year, Johnson says he was handcuffed by an officer and brought into the prison yard, where another prisoner attacked him with an ice pick and stabbed him “five or six times” as the two corrections officers saw. According to Johnson, one of the officers actually encouraged the attackers to carry out the assault in retaliation for a previous argument between Johnson and the officers.
In 2021, Johnson filed a lawsuit against Alabama prison officials for failing to maintain safe, violence, understaffing, overcrowding and prevalent corruption in Alabama prisons. To protect the lawsuit, the Alabama Attorney General’s office has resorted to law firms that have been paid millions of dollars by the state to advocate for a problematic prison system. Butler Snow.
State officials praise Butler Snow for his experience defending prison litigation, particularly William Lansford, the head of the company’s constitutional and civil rights litigation practice group. But now, the company is facing sanctions by a federal judge overseeing Johnson’s case, working with Lansford, after the company’s lawyers cited cases generated by artificial intelligence.
This is one of many cases that has affected lawyers across the country to include information generated by false AI in official legal submissions. The database attempting to track case prevalence has identified 106 instances around the world where courts discovered “AI hallucinations” in court documents.
Last year, lawyers were suspended for a year from practicing law in the Central District of Florida. Earlier this month in California, a federal judge ordered the company to pay more than $30,000 in legal fees after briefly including research generated in false AI.
During a hearing in Birmingham on Wednesday in Johnson’s case, U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco said she was considering a wide range of sanctions, including fines, continued legal education, referrals to licensing organizations and temporary suspensions.
She suggested that so far the disciplinary actions she encountered across the country have not been carried out sufficiently. The current case “proves that these sanctions are insufficient,” she told her lawyer. “If that’s the case, we wouldn’t be here.”
During the hearing, Butler Snow’s lawyers apologised and said they would accept sanctions that Manasco deemed appropriate. They also pointed to a robust policy requiring lawyers to seek approval when using AI for legal investigations.
Reeves tried to take full responsibility.
“I knew the limitations on the use of (AI) and in these two examples, it wasn’t in compliance with the policy,” Reeves said. “I hope your honor doesn’t punish my colleagues.”
Butler Snow’s attorneys have been appointed by the Alabama Attorney General’s Office and are paid by the state to defend Jefferson Dunn, a former commissioner of the Alabama Department of Corrections.
Lansford, which has contracted with the state for the case, said it has begun to conduct a review of previous submissions to ensure there are no more cases of false citations.
“This is very fresh and raw,” Lansford told Manasco. “The company’s response to this is not perfect yet.”
Manasco said Butlersnow will be able to file a motion within 10 days to explain what the process is for addressing the issue before making a decision on sanctions.
The use of fake AI citations in this case has become apparent in relation to case scheduling disputes.
Butler Snow’s lawyers contacted Johnson’s lawyers to set up a deposit for Johnson, who is still in prison. Johnson’s lawyers opposed the proposed date, pointing to unresolved documents that Johnson felt they were entitled to before he abdicated.
However, in a court filed by the court on May 7, Butler Snow retorted that case law requires Johnson to abdicate quickly. “The 11th Circuit and the District Court will routinely allow imprisoned deposits, when relevant to claims or defenses, regardless of other discovery disputes,” they wrote.
The lawyers listed four cases that superficially support their claims. It turns out that they were all made up.
Some of the cases cited are similar to the actual cases cited, but none of them were related to the matter before the court. For example, one was a 2021 case titled Kelly V, Birmingham, but according to Johnson’s lawyers, “The only existing case styled as Kelly v. City of Birmingham was determined to be identifiable by plaintiff’s lawyers.
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Earlier this week, Johnson’s lawyers filed a motion pointing to manufacturing, suggesting that they are products of “generative artificial intelligence.” They also found another clearly manufactured citation in previous submissions related to the dispute over the discovery.
The next day, Manasco had scheduled a hearing to determine whether Butler Snow Counsel should be approved. “In light of the seriousness of the charges, the court conducted an independent search of each quotation allegedly filed, but to no avail,” she wrote.
In his declaration to the court, Reeves said he was reviewing applications drafted by his junior colleagues, and wanted to include a quote because he was “believed to be an established point of the law.”
“I generally knew about ChatGpt,” Reeves writes, continuing to look for him to support the case law needed for the move. However, in “a rush to ensure that the move is confirmed and submitted,” he “did not to confirm the citation of cases that ChatGpt returned through an independent review of Westlaw or Pacer before including Westlaw or Pacer.”
“I sincerely regret this lapse in my hard work and judgment,” Reeves wrote. “I take full responsibility.”
Cases of false AI content entering legal applications appear to be on the rise in frequency, says Damien Charlotin, a Paris-based legal researcher and academic seeking to track cases.
“We see acceleration,” he said. “There have been a lot of cases over the past few weeks and months compared to before.”
But so far, the court’s response to the issue has been extremely generous, Charlotin said. More serious sanctions, including large fines and suspensions, tend to come when lawyers are not liable for mistakes.
“I don’t think it will last,” Charlotin said. “I think at some point, everyone will notify me.”
In addition to the Johnson case, Lansford and Butler Snow have contracts with the Alabama Department of Corrections to tackle several vast civil rights lawsuits. Includes this. It includes those raised by the Justice Department under Donald Trump in 2020.
A contract in that case alone was worth nearly $15 million over two years at one point.
Some Alabama lawmakers have questioned the amount the state is spending on companies to protect the case. But this week’s mistakes don’t seem to shake up the Attorney General’s confidence in Lansford or Butler Snow to continue their work so far.
On Wednesday, Manasco asked his attorney along with the Attorney General’s office. He was attending the hearing.
“Mr. Lansford continues to be the attorney general’s choice attorney,” he replied.