WASHINGTON: The Georgia Supreme Court on Tuesday disciplined a prosecutor in the US state, finding her misuse of artificial intelligence tools led to fake and misleading case citations appearing in a murder case ruling.

The state’s high court barred Deborah Leslie, a Clayton County assistant district attorney, from appearing before the justices for six months and ordered her to complete additional legal education on ethics, brief writing and proper AI use. The court found that “numerous fictitious or misattributed case citations” appeared in a lower courts 2025 order denying a murder defendants bid for a new trial.

Citing cases that do not exist or do not support the proposition for which they are cited is a violation of this Courts rules and falls far beneath the conduct we expect from Georgia lawyers, Justice Benjamin Land wrote.

State and federal courts across the country have disciplined attorneys for using generative AI tools for legal research and drafting without vetting the results. The Georgia case is among the rarer instances involving a prosecutor’s use of AI, and stands out because the lawyers’ AI errors were repeated in a court opinion.

Published in Dawn, May 6th, 2026