Judge sanctions criminal defense lawyer over AI filing
A Las Vegas judge sanctioned criminal defense lawyer Dean Kajioka after finding AI was misused in a bombing-case filing. District Judge Monica Trujillo struck the brief and ordered $500 payable to the Clark County library after prosecutors flagged a hallucinated citation and a style shift from Kajioka's earlier work.
Key Takeaways
- Judge Monica Trujillo ruled AI was misused in a reply brief for a Piero's Italian Cuisine bombing suspect.
- She struck the filing and ordered $500 in sanctions payable to the Clark County library.
- Prosecutors cited a fabricated case citation and a sharp change in style from earlier filings.
- Kajioka admitted AI apparently assisted the draft and said staff—not he—used the tool.
The sanction, reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, lands in a high-profile local case and feeds a wider debate covered across Future Tech & AI Wonders: what happens when generative tools enter court filings unchecked.
What did the judge find about the AI-assisted filing?
On Wednesday, District Judge Monica Trujillo said “AI was misused” in Dean Kajioka's filing for Robert Schwieger, a suspect in the pipe bombing of Piero's Italian Cuisine.
Trujillo noted the reply was much longer than a prior filing, written in a different style, with differently formatted citations and an incorrect reference to a prior case. She struck the document and ordered $500 in sanctions payable to the Clark County library.
Schwieger, 53, was arrested in April and faces counts of conspiracy to commit first-degree arson, first-degree arson, and using explosives to damage property. He is among several defendants accused in the restaurant bombing, which damaged only the entrance.
Why did prosecutors say a criminal defense lawyer crossed the line?
Kajioka filed a June 22 petition for a writ of habeas corpus seeking dismissal of the indictment. After prosecutors opposed the request on July 7, he filed a reply that raised red flags.
Prosecutors said the reply's style, tone, and formatting differed significantly from the original petition. They flagged what they called “a hallucinated citation to a non-existent case: ‘Evans v. State, 123 Nev. 117, 159 P.3d 438 (2007).’”
Chief Deputy District Attorney Eckley Keach argued unguarded AI use threatens the practice of law and the fair administration of justice. He said AI can produce work that looks correct on the surface but misses real legal nuance—and that courts and opposing counsel pay the cost when attorneys outsource duties to a machine.
Keach also said the citation was structurally valid yet pointed to no real case, which he called an AI hallucination. He noted the roughly 70-page reply arrived two days after the state's filing in a style alien to Kajioka's prior work.
How did the criminal defense lawyer respond in court?
Kajioka objected to attacks on his integrity, saying he has practiced more than 30 years without a credibility dispute. He said he did not think he violated an ethics rule and that the citation error was not intentional; he corrected it promptly once he learned of the mistake.
He had earlier told the Review-Journal he never uses AI and does not know how. In court he conceded that “after further inquiry, apparently AI was used to assist in drafting.” Afterward, he said he did not use AI personally but that his staff had “clearly” done so.
Kajioka previously called the wrong citation a typo and said a real case existed under a different cite: 944 P.2d 253 (1997). Keach countered that only after prosecutors dissected the filing did Kajioka concede what he could not deny.
The episode is a sharp reminder for any criminal defense lawyer: courts expect human verification of citations and authorship, even when staff lean on AI tools.