Australasian Lawyer
A federal judge has rejected American rapper Prakazrel “Pras” Michel’s request for a new trial despite an error made by an artificial intelligence (AI) program used in crafting closing arguments.
Michel, a member of the hip-hop group Fugees, had been convicted for using straw donors in a covert lobbying campaign related to foreign lobbying and witness tampering, the ABA Journal reported.
Senior US District Judge Colleen Kollar-Kotelly of the District of Columbia upheld the conviction. Michel was found guilty of participating in a scheme to persuade the US government to drop charges against a fugitive financier connected to Malaysia’s 1MDB sovereign wealth fund collapse.
During the trial, Michel’s legal team employed an AI tool created by EyeLevel.AI to help draft closing arguments. The AI-generated closing mistakenly attributed lyrics from rapper Puff Daddy (now known as Diddy) to Michel’s group, the Fugees. Despite this mix-up, the judge ruled that the error did not significantly impact the case’s outcome. Michel’s lawyer repeated the erroneous lyrics in his closing argument, but the court found no prejudice to the defendant.
Judge Kollar-Kotelly ruled that Michel had not demonstrated ineffective assistance of counsel, stating that Michel failed to show that his legal team’s use of the AI program led to an unfair trial or that it would have altered the verdict.
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