Federal Public Defender Submits Brief with Nonexistent Citation, Apparently Refuses to Admit This to the Judge at a Hearing
A short excerpt from the nearly 10,000-word opinion in U.S. v. Hayes, decided last week by Magistrate Judge Chi Soo Kim (E.D. Cal.):
The Court finds that Mr. Francisco submitted a fictitious or non-existent case and quotation in his written motion to unseal filed on November 21, 2024; knowingly made inaccurate and misleading statements in his written reply filed on December 5, 2024 to the government’s opposition that expressly raised the fictitious case and quotation; and knowingly made inaccurate and misleading statements at the December 9, 2024 hearing.
The Court further finds that Mr. Francisco’s inaccurate and misleading statements were not inadvertent as claimed, but knowing and made in bad faith. Despite being provided multiple opportunities to candidly acknowledge and correct his errors as required under his duty of candor to the court, Mr. Francisco unfortunately failed to do so….
In his motion to unseal, Mr. Francisco cited eight cases, six of which were cited in near string citation form. The primary case upon which Mr. Francisco relied—analyzing, quoting, describing the district court’s analysis, and addressing in two different places in the motion—was “United States v. Harris, 761 F. Supp. 409, 414 (D.D.C. 1991).”
Unfortunately, “United States v. Harris, 761 F. Supp. 409, 414 (D.D.C. 1991)” is not a real case. The citation has all the markings of a hallucinated case created by generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools such as ChatGPT and Google Bard that have been widely discussed by courts grappling with fictitious legal citations and reported by national news outlets. Similar to other fictitious case citations created by generative AI tools, the fictitious “United States v. Harris” case looks like a real case with a case name; a citation to the Federal Supplement, which is the reporter that publishes opinions from federal district courts; identification of a district court; and the year for the decision….
Unlike other cases where counsel and litigants have admitted, sometimes reluctantly, that the fictitious citations and quotations were created by generative AI, Mr. Francisco states that he “did not use and ha[s] never used AI (artificial intelligence) to draft any of my motions.” Instead, Mr. Francisco states that he “hastily” drafted the portion of his motion discussing the legislative history of 18 U.S.C. § 3509(d), which includes the fictitious case and quotation. Regarding his citation to the fictitious United States v. Harris case, he states: “I am baffled to say where it came from, first in a
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