AI Hallucinations Poison Court Citations

A California prosecutor used AI to keep a man in jail, and the AI literally hallucinated six

fake legal cases to make it happen. This isn't a sci-fi dystopia; this happened in Nevada County.

The DA’s office used an AI tool to write a criminal brief against a 57-year-old welder

named Kyle Kjoller. The software spit out six specific case citations to justify keeping

him locked up. The problem is, none of those cases ever existed. The machine didn't

know the answer, so it just confidently lied. It invented names, dates,

and rulings out of thin air. It sprayed fictional precedents directly into the court record.

And here is the absolute worst part: Kjoller was convicted anyway. The fake law worked.