From today's decision in U.S. v. Cohen by Judge Jesse Furman (S.D.N.Y.) (see also N.Y. Times [Benjamin Weiser]):
In support of his motion [for early termination of supervised release], Schwartz [Cohen's lawyer] cited and described three "examples" of decisions granting early termination of supervised release that were allegedly affirmed by the Second Circuit. See id. at 2-3 (citing United States v. Figueroa-Florez, 64 F.4th 223 (2d Cir. 2022); United States v. Ortiz (No. 21-3391), 2022 WL 4424741 (2d Cir. Oct. 11, 2022); and United States v. Amato, 2022 WL 1669877 (2d Cir. May 10, 2022)). There was only one problem: The cases do not exist. Although the Government failed to point that fact out in its opposition to Cohen's motion, E. Danya Perry—who entered a notice of appearance on Cohen's behalf following the Government's submission—disclosed in a reply that she had been "unable to verify" the citations in Schwartz's filing….
Schwartz (aided by his own counsel) and Cohen (aided by Perry)[,] … [w]ith one exception discussed below, … tell the same basic story. In early November 2023, Schwartz sent a draft of what would become the November 29, 2023 motion to Cohen. Cohen asked Perry (who had not yet entered an appearance in this case) to provide feedback on the draft, which she did. One comment, which Cohen passed along to Schwartz, was that the motion should cite a few cases granting early termination. Schwartz adopted what he understood to be Perry's suggestions and sent subsequent drafts back to Cohen.
On November 25, 2023, Cohen then sent three emails to Schwartz with the cases in question and summaries of the cases. Cohen had obtained the cases and summaries from Google Bard, which he "did not realize … was a generative text service that, like Chat-GPT, could show citations and descriptions that looked real but actually were not. Instead, [he had] understood it to be a super-charged search engine …." According to Cohen, he did not "have access to Westlaw or other standard resources for confirming the details of cases" and "trusted Mr. Schwartz and his team to vet [his] suggested additions before incorporating them" into what became the motion.
That trust proved unfounded.
