by Donald ‘C-Note’ Hooker
Last month, while housed at the only prison in the County of Los Angeles, I was going through a news article on these digital tablets they give us. Prison has come a long way from the first time I stepped into one, 45 years ago. Let alone the first day I stepped on a prison exercise yard from California Youth Authority (CYA), because a Chicano had gotten shanked in the neck. I didn’t witness it, nor did the guards. We only saw the guy turn himself into them (guards), while holding the side of his bloody neck. That was in 1985, not 2025.
In 1988, I became a jailhouse lawyer; however, 10 years ago, I went into retirement. I had become extremely jaded with the law in relation to my own legal circumstances. I had waived the white flag; I had given up. It was very difficult to maintain, especially here in California, where every time you turn around some prisoner is shouting from the top of his lungs like some modern day Paul Revere: “There’s a new law out! There’s a new law out that’s going to cut us loose.”
I had a different sentiment, one rooted in a speech Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. gave in 1963 on the mall in Washington, D.C. You see, nobody tells you that Dr. King’s “I Have a Dream” speech was a militant speech. Before he gets to the part in the speech about this dream, he states, “America has given the Negro people a bad check, a check which has come back marked ‘insufficient funds.’” Nobody tells us about that part of the speech. But that’s how I felt when reading case law about some right and it not being honored by the criminal justice system.
After reading on that digital tablet a Fox Digital News article by Breanne Deppisch, “Apparent AI mistakes force two judges to retract separate rulings,” I’d thought I would put back on my jailhouse lawyer journalist hat. The article noted two separate occasions where federal judges had to withdraw their rulings because they relied on AI to write their opinions. In New Jersey, U.S. District Judge Julian Neals withdrew his denial of a motion to dismiss a securities fraud case after litigant lawyers revealed the decision relied on filings with “pervasive and material inaccuracies.” The filing pointed to “numerous instances” of made-up quotes as well as three separate instances when the outcome of lawsuits appeared to have been mistaken, prompting Neals to withdraw his decision.
In Mississippi, U.S. District Judge Henry Wingate replaced his original July 20 temporary restraining order that paused enforcement of a state law blocking diversity, equity and inclusion programs in public schools after lawyers notified the judge of serious errors. The decision “relie[d] upon the purported declaration testimony of four individuals whose declarations do not appear in the record for this case.” Wingate subsequently issued a new ruling, though lawyers for the state have asked his original order to be placed back on the docket. “All parties are entitled to a complete and accurate record of all papers filed and orders entered in this action for the benefit of the Fifth Circuit’s appellate review,” the state lawyers said in a filing.
If lifetime appointed federal judges are using AI and are getting it wrong, what about state judges, where most of America’s prisoners will have their cases heard? Just some food for thought, but what about the attorneys we are handing over our hard earned money to represent us in a court of law? The article noted the American Bar Association holds the position, “For bar- admitted attorneys, these erroneous court submissions are not taken lightly. Lawyers are responsible for the veracity of all information included in court filings, including if it includes AI-generated materials.”
The article went on to further note that in May, a federal judge in California slapped law firms with $31,000 in sanctions for using AI in court filings, saying that “no reasonably competent attorney should outsource research and writing to this technology, particularly without any attempt to verify the accuracy of that material.” Also in July, a federal judge in Alabama sanctioned three attorneys for submitting erroneous court filings that were later revealed to have been generated by Chat GPT. Among other things, the filings in question included the use of the AI-generated quote “hallucination,” U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco said in her order, which also referred the lawyers in question to the state bar for further disciplinary proceedings: “Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction.”
Recently the state of California has thrust me back into a situation where I have to fight for legal rights, and as a result, I too have used AI, with horrible results. Like these well-to-do lawyers and judges, I don’t use free versions of AI, but the premium versions. One of my uses was for a prison grievance that was being filed at the department level. That’s the highest prison grievance level in the state. I went on to submit the AI version, albeit I thought it was too wordy. It got denied. However, I don’t think it was because of the wordy AI content, but that ol’ Martin Luther King Jr. thing going on.
My next venture in the use of AI was for a writ of habeas corpus on my behalf. I was awe-struck by the legal work product it produced, concise and straight to the point. Something I could not have done; being so close to the case, I would want to state every little detail. Later, I would learn it cited cases that didn’t exist and outcomes of prisoner releases that did not happen. Despite these untruths, I seriously considered filing this writ with its warts and all. In the end, I did not.
Besides my admonishment to pro per or pro se prisoner litigants not to use AI, I am now more concerned with those prisoners that have the $50,000 to $100,000 to hire a post-conviction lawyer. Imagine shelling out that kind of money, only to have the judge admonish your attorney about a piss-poor legal filing with “hallucinated” AI lies. Even worse for me is to be watching one of my trusted TV court watcher analysts talk about the brilliance of a judge’s opinion, how thoughtful, how well-written, only later to be told, the opinion was written by AI.
C-Note is known as the world’s most prolific prison artist. He has written for the John Jay College of Criminal Justice, Mprisond Thotz, Inmate Blogger and more. To stay updated on C-Note’s parole board journey or Mumia Abu-Jamal’s reporting on prison elder abuse, visit the website P.E.A.C.E. (Parole Elder Abuse Concerns Everyone), www.paroleelderabuse.org. He’s also available for Zoom and other forms of call-ins at meetings or events. Message him on the GTL Getting Out App: Donald Hooker, K94063 (A2-150), P.O. Box 4430, Lancaster, CA 93539.
