Prosecutors believe a longtime defense lawyer submitted a filing largely created using artificial intelligence, resulting in citations to a nonexistent case.
The Saturday motion from Chief Deputy District Attorney Eckley Keach asked for sanctions against Dean Kajioka, an attorney licensed in Nevada since 1993, and to strike the brief at issue.
“I never use AI,” Kajioka said in a brief Monday interview. “I don’t even know how to use AI.”
Keach anticipated such a stance.
“Should Defense counsel take the position that he did not use AI to author his brief, then by virtue of his denial, he is admitting to inserting a blatantly false citation into his reply in violation of the Nevada Rules of Professional Conduct,” he wrote in court documents.
The dispute comes in a case stemming from a November explosion at Piero’s Italian Cuisine, an iconic restaurant near the Strip that was featured in Martin Scorsese’s 1995 film “Casino.”
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 only caused damage to the entrance.
The bomb could have “burned Piero’s to the ground” had it been configured differently, Chief Deputy District Attorney Michael Schwartzer previously said in court.
Kajioka filed a petition for writ of habeas corpus on June 22, arguing for the dismissal of the indictment against his client. Prosecutors opposed the request in a July 7 filing. Then, on Friday, Kajioka filed a reply to the prosecutors’ filing opposing dismissal.
That filing raised concerns for prosecutors.
“Immediately, the State’s attorneys observed that the style, tone and formatting of the reply differed significantly from Defendant’s original petition, including, notably, a shift from inline citations, and simple page references to the ‘Grand Jury Tr.’, to footnote citations and page and line citations to the Grand Jury Transcript abbreviated as (GJT),” wrote Keach.
Those changes led prosecutors to check Kajioka’s citations, he said.
“Almost immediately, the State identified a hallucinated citation to a non-existent case: ‘Evans v. State, 123 Nev. 117, 159 P.3d 438 (2007),’” said Keach. “Defendant referenced this citation multiple times, including providing alleged commentary by the Nevada Supreme Court from the nonexistent case.”
Keach said prosecutors’ searches on Westlaw and Google did not turn up the case, though he noted that there are real Evans v. State opinions from years other than 2007.
He did not request specific sanctions, but said he would leave that up to District Judge Monica Trujillo, who is overseeing the case.
The prosecutor emphasized the broader significance of the issue.
“As technology improves, and AI hallucinated cases become harder to detect, it is imperative that this Court address such ethical violations quickly and decisively to deter future and more rampant fraud from being perpetuated on the Courts,” he said in court papers.
Contact Noble Brigham at nbrigham@reviewjournal.com.
