CPS prosecutor cited a non-existent precedent in the High Court — The Guardian

In the United Kingdom, Ravinder Dhillon, a senior prosecutor at the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS), referred to a non-existent legal precedent during proceedings in the High Court. As The Guardian reports, the erroneous citation likely entered the materials from an AI-generated summary produced during an internet search.

Non-existent court ruling

Dhillon represented the CPS in a dispute over the decision to prosecute a boy who was 11 at the time of the alleged rape of his younger sister. The child's lawyers challenged the prosecution's decision, stating that it had not taken into account the views of social workers, youth work specialists and a forensic psychologist.

The prosecutor cited the case CPS – R v J [2024] EWCA Crim 3529 in detail, but no such ruling exists. In October, she admitted the error and explained that she had meant another, real ruling handed down 15 years earlier. Two senior High Court judges described this explanation as unsatisfactory.

The High Court stated that the citation of the imaginary case did not affect the outcome of the challenge to the decision to continue the criminal prosecution. The boy's hearing in the youth court was scheduled for this week.

More current news is available on the UA.News Telegram channel Telegram.

CPS response

The CPS said that the agency has a strict policy on the use of artificial intelligence: AI must not be used to make legal decisions, and its results must undergo human review. A service representative said that the error was discovered during online legal research, after which it was corrected and an internal review was conducted.

Following the review, the CPS reminded staff that case law should be cited only from reliable legal sources. This is the second known case in which the CPS has acknowledged that one of its lawyers cited non-existent legal sources, likely linked to AI.

Lawyer Matthew Lee, who maintains a UK register of AI-related errors, said that after this case it contains 101 entries on confirmed, likely and disputed AI errors, as well as related false citations of case law. He warned that the actual number of such episodes may be higher, as decisions of many lower courts are not published.