On February 6, 2026, a criminal case, alleged to be 2023CF001060, involving over 40 counts of burglary and theft, was reportedly dismissed due to the usage of AI in a filing that led to hallucinated case law.
For those of you that like videos.
Of course, my favorite part was the Reddit comments.
For what it’s worth, I agree it’s a big deal. More and more we are seeing systems that cannot be trusted used in law and by law enforcement, and the media is not holding these systems, companies, and counties accountable through reporting. This is very much the same problem we’ve always had with regard to digital recording failures where things have gone terribly wrong in some places, but it just doesn’t make the news. And then the news doesn’t reach other decision makers who go on to make similarly horrible decisions for other jurisdictions. More and more lives, jobs, and dreams destroyed, because nobody cares about truth.
P.S.
This, perhaps, explains some of my outrage from when NCRA Strong was disbanded by Keith Lemons. Here you had society collectively ignoring problems with the implementation of recording and AI in our courts, and you had a group of volunteers proactively and on their own time recording these problems, and the solution was to purge that group from the organization and destroy that momentum.
If there was ever a simpler way to show that our institutions are bought and actively working against us in some cases.
But as long as they designate a week for you to celebrate yourselves, it’s cool, right?
Don’t get me wrong, everybody deserves to.
But I’d really like something to celebrate in ten years. Because we’re telling a lot of students there’s a future here, and absent legislative guardrails or proper investment, there might not be.
Again, I point to survivorship bias so prevalent in our field. “I made it, anyone can make it.” No, they can’t. We’ve lost real graduates because the field didn’t sustain them. And that was pre-AI and when digital was marginalized. That was before big money decided change was necessary.
And it would be so disrespectful for me not to share their story. Because it hints at something larger at play here. How did we go from not enough work, to not enough reporters, to not enough work to justify raises in the middle of what was forecasted to be an incredible shortage? 50% of all the jobs are supposed to be uncovered right now but it’s business as usual, maybe we have trouble covering a job here or there.
Truth be told, private sector New York got a little better for some people because others dropped out. Public sector has trouble recruiting in some areas. There’s more to be said, but maybe when my writing finally hits it big.™️
Sucks for me, really. I was good at messing with the fraudsters. They wised up and realized they didn’t have to lie to win. Most of them. Except maybe Naegeli. Jury’s still out. But then again if I had Naegeli’s business sense we wouldn’t be having these problems to begin with. Or ruthlessness? Are they one and the same?
I can’t help this feeling that it’s kind of like watching my son. Humans can get this big burst of energy just before a nice, long nap.
Are we living the burst of energy?
What’s that nap going to look like?
Or are we living the nap?
And it’s time to wake up?
Or maybe it’s just that human desire to make sense of the chaos of billions of stories being told every day.
Isn’t it interesting that the most fascinating stories are the ones we didn’t publish online?