Las Vegas Judge Sanctions Defense Attorney for Misusing AI - GovTech

District Judge Monica Trujillo said “AI was misused” in Dean Kajioka’s filing on behalf of a suspect in the bombing of Piero’s Italian Cuisine.

The reply was much longer than a prior filing, she said, and was written in a different style, with differently formatted citations and an incorrect reference to a prior case.

The judge struck the document at issue and ordered $500 in sanctions, payable to the Clark County library.

Kajioka’s client, Robert Schwieger, 53, was arrested in April and faces a count each of conspiracy to commit first-degree arson, first-degree arson and using explosives to damage, destroy, attempt or conspire to damage or destroy property.

He is one of several defendants accused of playing a role in the pipe bombing of the restaurant, which caused damage only to the entrance.

Kajioka filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus June 22, arguing for the dismissal of the indictment against his client. Prosecutors opposed the request in a July 7 filing. Then, Kajioka filed a reply to the prosecutors’ filing opposing dismissal.

That filing raised red flags for prosecutors, who noted that its “style, tone and formatting of the reply differed significantly from Defendant’s original petition.”

They said it included “a hallucinated citation to a non-existent case: ‘Evans v. State, 123 Nev. 117, 159 P.3d 438 (2007).’” And they said they believed Kajioka had used AI to draft the brief.

Kajioka previously said the incorrect citation was “just a typo” and that the case existed, albeit with a different citation: “944 P.2d 253 (1997).”

“Unguarded use of AI is an existential threat to the practice of law and the fair administration of justice,” said Chief Deputy District Attorney Eckley Keach in court Wednesday. “AI will never understand the human cost of a criminal case, not to a defendant, not to the victims of crime. And when a defense attorney or any attorney relinquishes their duties to the machine, it’s opposing counsel and the court that bear that cost, because the design of AI will produce work product that superficially looks correct, but once you scratch past the surface, it misses the nuances of actual law.”

He suggested that Kajioka had violated an ethics rule by making misrepresentations to the judge, first by attesting he was the author of the brief at issue and then by doubling down and insisting a citation was “a mere human-generated typo.”

Keach said the citation could only have been an “AI hallucination,” because it was a structurally correct legal citation but did not point to an actual case.

“There’s no way that Mr. Kajioka submitted a 70-page argument two days after the state filed its return in a style, in a syntax, in a citation format that is completely alien to the entire body of Mr. Kajioka’s body of legal work going back as far as when I started in this office,” he said.

Attorney: Citation error not intentional

Kajioka objected to Keach’s arguments.

“I find it highly offensive and professionally questionable that my integrity is at question here,” he said. “I’ve been practicing over 30 years in this court, as well as the old courthouse across the street, without question, without any dispute as to my credibility.”

He said he did not think he had violated an ethics rule and that the citation error was not intentional. When he learned of the mistake, he corrected it promptly, he said.

But Kajioka conceded a key point.

“After further inquiry, apparently AI was used to assist in drafting,” he said.

Keach pointed out that Kajioka’s previous public comments seemed at odds with his statements in court.

“I never use AI,” Kajioka told the Las Vegas Review-Journal two weeks ago. “I don’t even know how to use AI.”

After court, he said that he did not use AI personally but said his staff had “clearly” done so.

“Only now, after the state has taken pains, true pains to go through why statistically, why structurally it’s AI does he now concede a point he can’t deny,” said Keach during the hearing.

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