The complainant in the case was found to have prepared for court with AI-generated documents
A rape trial in the UK was recently halted after the witness was found to have used artificial intelligence to produce documents for court, reported the Law Society Gazette.
Lady justice Juliet May, justice Martin Griffiths, and judge Martin Picton permitted the prosecution appeal against the judgment of recorder James Hay in the case of Rex v FGD at Lewes Crown Court. Proceedings had been stayed after a “broad and intrusive” investigation of the complainant’s phone revealed that AI produced documents in response to prompts, per the Gazette.
Hay’s ruling stated that witness training was banned in all jurisdictions; nonetheless, it described the complainant’s evidence as “uncontaminated” given that the evidence-in-chief was recorded in advance shortly after the complainant reported the supposed incident to police.
May noted in her lead judgment that witness coaching typically takes place in private and is not completely recorded; thus, any suggestions made to the witness cannot be determined.
“By contrast, here, all that the AI ‘coach’ provided to C was fully recorded and could be placed in its entirety before the jury, or summarised by agreement and put into agreed facts,” May said in a snippet of the lead judgment published by the Gazette. “This is precisely the kind of case where the trial process would be well able to deal with any potential prejudice…arising from [the complainant's] resort to AI in advance of cross-examination.”
The appeals court determined that Hay erred in declaring that the defendant “could not have a fair trial.”
“In future we would encourage counsel on both sides when dealing with an application to stay for abuse explicitly to raise and explore all the ways in which the trial process could deal with any potential prejudice so that the trial judge is able to consider and deal with each separately, when ruling on the issue,” the court said in a snippet of the judgment published by the Gazette.
Hay’s decision has been reversed, and a retrial has been ordered for listing “at the earliest opportunity,” per the Gazette.
In light of what happened with this trial, the appeals judges said in a statement published by the Gazette that the National Police Chiefs Council, the Crown Prosecution Service, and the Criminal Procedure Rule Committee “may wish to consider how to address and regulate the use of AI in criminal proceedings,” noting that it was “unlikely to be an isolated example.”
