From Friday's Sixth Circuit decision in U.S. v. Farris, by Judges Eric Clay, Julia Gibbons, and Whitney Hermandorfer:
Howe [a court-appointed criminal defense lawyer appealing a drug trafficking sentence] filed two briefs—a principal brief and a reply—on behalf of Farris. Upon our initial review of the case, we began to suspect that Howe's briefs were generated, at least in part, by artificial-intelligence software. The first tell was the file name of the principal brief: "CoCounsel Skill Results." CoCounsel is the name of Westlaw's internal artificial-intelligence platform. From our vantage point, that file-name abnormality suggested that Howe's brief might have derived not from Howe's independent work, but directly from artificial-intelligence software.
Further suspicions arose when, during our substantive review of the briefs, we discovered three problematic citations:
Page 4 of the principal brief states, "The Guidelines' commentary makes clear that '[m]ere presence or knowledge of the offense is not sufficient to make a person a participant.' U.S.S.G. § 3B1.1 cmt. n.1."
Page 10 of the principal brief states, "The Sixth Circuit has reversed role enhancements on similar facts. In Washington, the Court held that 'simply facilitating the offense without exercising decision-making authority is insufficient.' 715 F.3d at 985."
Page 10 of the principal brief states, "Likewise, in Anthony, the Court vacated a § 3B1.1 enhancement because '[t]here was no evidence [the defendant] directed or supervised anyone else.'"
The reply brief repeats the latter two quotations. Each of these citations references genuine legal authorities. But the purported direct quotations do not appear in their cited sources. And upon deeper review, we were unable to locate any relevant legal authority that contained the same or substantially similar language as the above quotations. So, it did not appear that the misattributions involved mere citation mix-ups or transcription errors.
