Alabama
Judge sanctions lawyers defending state’s prison system for using fake ChatGPT cases in filings
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge reprimanded lawyers with a high-priced firm defending Alabama’s prison system for using ChatGPT to write court filings with “completely made up” case citations.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco publicly reprimanded three lawyers with Butler Snow, the law firm hired to defend Alabama and other jurisdictions in lawsuits against their prison systems. The order sanctioned William R. Lunsford, the head of the firm division that handles prison litigation, along with Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford.
“Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction,” Manasco wrote in the Wednesday sanctions order.
Manasco removed the three from participating in the case where the false citations were filed and directed them to share the sanctions order with clients, opposing lawyers and judges in all of their other cases. She also referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar for possible disciplinary action.
Butler Snow is representing Alabama in multiple lawsuits involving its prison system. Alabama has paid Lunsford and his firm more than $40 million since 2020, according to state spending records.
Butler Snow lawyers had repeatedly apologized during an earlier hearing before Manasco. They said an attorney used artificial intelligence to research supporting case law but did not verify the information before adding it to two filings with the federal court. Those citations turned out to be “hallucinations” — meaning incorrect citations — by the AI system.
“In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up,” Manasco wrote. She added that using the citations without verifying their accuracy was “recklessness in the extreme.”
The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.
Maryland
Wrongfully imprisoned man who spent 32 years behind bars sues former authorities
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man who was wrongly imprisoned for 32 years, including a decade on death row, for two killings he did not commit is suing former law enforcement officials in a lawsuit announced Thursday, though four of the five people named as defendants are deceased.
John Huffington was pardoned by then-Gov. Larry Hogan in January 2023. Hogan cited prosecutorial misconduct in granting a full innocence pardon to Huffington in connection with a 1981 double slaying in Harford County. A Maryland board approved $2.9 million in compensation for Huffington later that year during Gov. Wes Moore’s administration.
Huffington said in a statement Thursday that “it took many, many painful years, but the truth eventually came out.” Just 18 at the time of his arrest, he said neither of his parents ever got to see and understand that his name had been cleared and he was set free.
“All of those years I spent behind bars damaged and strained my relationships, cost me the ability to have a family of my own, cost me the ability to be with my mother when she died, cost me precious time with my father who was in his nineties and suffering from Alzheimer’s when I finally was released,” he added.
Huffington, 62, always maintained his innocence. He was released from Patuxent Institution in 2013 after serving 32 years of two life sentences.
He was convicted twice in the killings known as the “Memorial Day Murders.” Diane Becker was stabbed to death in her recreational vehicle, while her 4-year-old son, who was inside, was not harmed. Joseph Hudson, Becker’s boyfriend, was fatally shot and found a few miles (kilometers) away. A second suspect in the slayings testified against Huffington, was convicted of first-degree murder, and served 27 years.
Prosecutors relied on testimony that was later discredited about hair found at the crime scene purportedly matching Huffington’s.
He appealed his first conviction in 1981. In 1983, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death. Prosecutors later commuted that sentence to two life terms.
Questions about evidence in the case arose when The Washington Post uncovered an FBI report in 2011 that found the FBI agent who analyzed hair evidence in Huffington’s case may not have used reliable science, or even tested the hair at all. The report had been written in 1999, but Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly didn’t provide it to Huffington’s lawyers.
A Frederick County judge vacated Huffington’s convictions and ordered a new trial in 2013 after Huffington presented new evidence using DNA testing that was not available during his earlier trials. When the hair evidence was tested for DNA more than 30 years later, the results showed it was not Huffington’s hair.
Maryland’s highest court unanimously voted to disbar Cassilly in 2021. The court found he withheld exculpatory evidence in the 1981 double murder and lied about it in the following years.
Cassilly, who maintained he did nothing wrong, retired in 2019. He died in January.
His brother, Bob Cassilly, who is now the Harford County executive, said in a statement that his brother was a decorated war hero who was injured while serving his country and served as the county’s state’s attorney for 36 years while in a wheelchair.
“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased, as are the other named defendants, except for one who is almost 80,” Cassilly said. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case -- the county was never the defendants’ employer.”
Huffington also is suing the assistant state’s attorney on his case, Gerard Comen, the Harford County government, and the county sheriff’s office detectives, David Saneman, William Van Horn and Wesley J. Picha.
All but Saneman are now dead, according to the lawsuit filed July 15 in federal court in Baltimore.
Washington
Trump appeals to Supreme Court to allow $783 million research-funding cuts from NIH
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
U.S. District Judge William Young found that the abrupt cancellations ignored long-held government rules and standards.
Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, also said the cuts amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
“I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said at a hearing last month. An appeals court left the ruling in place.
The ruling came in lawsuits filed by 16 attorneys general, public-health advocacy groups and some affected scientists. His decision addressed only a fraction of the hundreds of NIH research projects that have been cut.
The Trump administration’s appeal also takes aim at nearly two dozen cases over funding.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket from April that allowed cuts to teacher training programs to go forward, one of multiple recent victories for the president at the nation’s highest court. The order shows that district judges shouldn’t be hearing those cases at all, but rather sending them to federal claims court, he argued.
“Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize—as members of this Court have done—that paeans to ‘diversity’ often conceal invidious racial discrimination,” he wrote.
New York
Trump sues NYC over ‘sanctuary city’ policies
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday sued New York City over its “sanctuary city” policies, arguing they are obstructing the government from enforcing immigration law and contributed to the recent shooting of an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.
The federal lawsuit is the latest in a series of suits brought by the Justice Department targeting state or city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement.
“New York City has released thousands of criminals on the streets to commit violent crimes against law-abiding citizens due to sanctuary city policies,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release. “If New York City won’t stand up for the safety of its citizens, we will.”
The lawsuit — which also names Mayor Eric Adams, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and numerous other city officials and departments — targets policies that include barring city law enforcement from honoring civil immigration detainers by holding people in custody past their release date.
Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokesperson for Adams, said the mayor “supports the essence” of the city’s policies but has urged the City Council “to reexamine them to ensure we can effectively work with the federal government to make our city safer” when it comes to dealing with “violent criminals.” She added: “So far, the Council has refused.”
A representative for the City Council did not immediately return a request for comment.
The suit comes after Trump officials on Monday blamed the city’s sanctuary policies for the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer in a Manhattan park over the weekend. The officer was off duty and not in uniform at the time.
Authorities have said the two men apprehended in connection with Saturday’s robbery-gone-wrong have been arrested a number of times since they entered the country illegally from the Dominican Republic in recent years. One of the men had been released following a 2024 arrest despite an active detainer, according to the lawsuit.
Police say the 42-year-old officer had been sitting with a woman in a park beneath the George Washington Bridge when two men approached on a moped. The officer, who has not been named, drew his service weapon and exchanged gunfire with one of the men. The officer was shot in the face and arm while the suspect was hit in the groin and leg.
The lawsuit says New York City’s policies violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution by interfering with the enforcement of federal law. Similar lawsuits have been filed in recent months against New York state; Colorado; Rochester, New York; Los Angeles; and elsewhere.
“New York City has long been at the vanguard of interfering with enforcing this country’s immigration laws,” the lawsuit says. “Its history as a sanctuary city dates back to 1989, and its efforts to thwart federal immigration enforcement have only intensified since.”
It says city policies limiting cooperation and information sharing with federal agents conflict with federal law.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said the city “has no obligation to redirect its resources to take on federal immigration enforcement, let alone the cruel and lawless deportation campaign the Trump regime is waging.”
“New York City’s decades-old, bipartisan sanctuary laws have made our city safer, supported our economy, strengthened our communities, and made it easier for our people to access vital services,” Lieberman said.
Judge sanctions lawyers defending state’s prison system for using fake ChatGPT cases in filings
BIRMINGHAM, Ala. (AP) — A federal judge reprimanded lawyers with a high-priced firm defending Alabama’s prison system for using ChatGPT to write court filings with “completely made up” case citations.
U.S. District Judge Anna Manasco publicly reprimanded three lawyers with Butler Snow, the law firm hired to defend Alabama and other jurisdictions in lawsuits against their prison systems. The order sanctioned William R. Lunsford, the head of the firm division that handles prison litigation, along with Matthew B. Reeves and William J. Cranford.
“Fabricating legal authority is serious misconduct that demands a serious sanction,” Manasco wrote in the Wednesday sanctions order.
Manasco removed the three from participating in the case where the false citations were filed and directed them to share the sanctions order with clients, opposing lawyers and judges in all of their other cases. She also referred the matter to the Alabama State Bar for possible disciplinary action.
Butler Snow is representing Alabama in multiple lawsuits involving its prison system. Alabama has paid Lunsford and his firm more than $40 million since 2020, according to state spending records.
Butler Snow lawyers had repeatedly apologized during an earlier hearing before Manasco. They said an attorney used artificial intelligence to research supporting case law but did not verify the information before adding it to two filings with the federal court. Those citations turned out to be “hallucinations” — meaning incorrect citations — by the AI system.
“In simpler terms, the citations were completely made up,” Manasco wrote. She added that using the citations without verifying their accuracy was “recklessness in the extreme.”
The filings in question were made in a lawsuit filed by an inmate who was stabbed on multiple occasions at the William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility in Jefferson County. The lawsuit alleges that prison officials are failing to keep inmates safe.
Maryland
Wrongfully imprisoned man who spent 32 years behind bars sues former authorities
ANNAPOLIS, Md. (AP) — A Maryland man who was wrongly imprisoned for 32 years, including a decade on death row, for two killings he did not commit is suing former law enforcement officials in a lawsuit announced Thursday, though four of the five people named as defendants are deceased.
John Huffington was pardoned by then-Gov. Larry Hogan in January 2023. Hogan cited prosecutorial misconduct in granting a full innocence pardon to Huffington in connection with a 1981 double slaying in Harford County. A Maryland board approved $2.9 million in compensation for Huffington later that year during Gov. Wes Moore’s administration.
Huffington said in a statement Thursday that “it took many, many painful years, but the truth eventually came out.” Just 18 at the time of his arrest, he said neither of his parents ever got to see and understand that his name had been cleared and he was set free.
“All of those years I spent behind bars damaged and strained my relationships, cost me the ability to have a family of my own, cost me the ability to be with my mother when she died, cost me precious time with my father who was in his nineties and suffering from Alzheimer’s when I finally was released,” he added.
Huffington, 62, always maintained his innocence. He was released from Patuxent Institution in 2013 after serving 32 years of two life sentences.
He was convicted twice in the killings known as the “Memorial Day Murders.” Diane Becker was stabbed to death in her recreational vehicle, while her 4-year-old son, who was inside, was not harmed. Joseph Hudson, Becker’s boyfriend, was fatally shot and found a few miles (kilometers) away. A second suspect in the slayings testified against Huffington, was convicted of first-degree murder, and served 27 years.
Prosecutors relied on testimony that was later discredited about hair found at the crime scene purportedly matching Huffington’s.
He appealed his first conviction in 1981. In 1983, a jury found him guilty of first-degree murder and he was sentenced to death. Prosecutors later commuted that sentence to two life terms.
Questions about evidence in the case arose when The Washington Post uncovered an FBI report in 2011 that found the FBI agent who analyzed hair evidence in Huffington’s case may not have used reliable science, or even tested the hair at all. The report had been written in 1999, but Harford County State’s Attorney Joseph Cassilly didn’t provide it to Huffington’s lawyers.
A Frederick County judge vacated Huffington’s convictions and ordered a new trial in 2013 after Huffington presented new evidence using DNA testing that was not available during his earlier trials. When the hair evidence was tested for DNA more than 30 years later, the results showed it was not Huffington’s hair.
Maryland’s highest court unanimously voted to disbar Cassilly in 2021. The court found he withheld exculpatory evidence in the 1981 double murder and lied about it in the following years.
Cassilly, who maintained he did nothing wrong, retired in 2019. He died in January.
His brother, Bob Cassilly, who is now the Harford County executive, said in a statement that his brother was a decorated war hero who was injured while serving his country and served as the county’s state’s attorney for 36 years while in a wheelchair.
“Joe cannot defend himself in this decades-old matter because he is now deceased, as are the other named defendants, except for one who is almost 80,” Cassilly said. “Harford County government, in which I currently serve as county executive, has no role in this case -- the county was never the defendants’ employer.”
Huffington also is suing the assistant state’s attorney on his case, Gerard Comen, the Harford County government, and the county sheriff’s office detectives, David Saneman, William Van Horn and Wesley J. Picha.
All but Saneman are now dead, according to the lawsuit filed July 15 in federal court in Baltimore.
Washington
Trump appeals to Supreme Court to allow $783 million research-funding cuts from NIH
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Trump administration asked the Supreme Court on Thursday to allow it to cut hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of research funding in its push to roll back federal diversity, equity and inclusion efforts.
The Justice Department argued a federal judge in Massachusetts was wrong to block the National Institutes of Health from making $783 million worth of cuts to align with President Donald Trump’s priorities.
U.S. District Judge William Young found that the abrupt cancellations ignored long-held government rules and standards.
Young, an appointee of Republican President Ronald Reagan, also said the cuts amounted to “racial discrimination and discrimination against America’s LGBTQ community.”
“I’ve never seen government racial discrimination like this,” Young said at a hearing last month. An appeals court left the ruling in place.
The ruling came in lawsuits filed by 16 attorneys general, public-health advocacy groups and some affected scientists. His decision addressed only a fraction of the hundreds of NIH research projects that have been cut.
The Trump administration’s appeal also takes aim at nearly two dozen cases over funding.
Solicitor General D. John Sauer pointed to a 5-4 decision on the Supreme Court’s emergency docket from April that allowed cuts to teacher training programs to go forward, one of multiple recent victories for the president at the nation’s highest court. The order shows that district judges shouldn’t be hearing those cases at all, but rather sending them to federal claims court, he argued.
“Those decisions reflect quintessential policy judgments on hotly contested issues that should not be subject to judicial second-guessing. It is hardly irrational for agencies to recognize—as members of this Court have done—that paeans to ‘diversity’ often conceal invidious racial discrimination,” he wrote.
New York
Trump sues NYC over ‘sanctuary city’ policies
NEW YORK (AP) — The Trump administration on Thursday sued New York City over its “sanctuary city” policies, arguing they are obstructing the government from enforcing immigration law and contributed to the recent shooting of an off-duty U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer.
The federal lawsuit is the latest in a series of suits brought by the Justice Department targeting state or city policies seen as interfering with immigration enforcement.
“New York City has released thousands of criminals on the streets to commit violent crimes against law-abiding citizens due to sanctuary city policies,” Attorney General Pamela Bondi said in a news release. “If New York City won’t stand up for the safety of its citizens, we will.”
The lawsuit — which also names Mayor Eric Adams, Police Commissioner Jessica Tisch and numerous other city officials and departments — targets policies that include barring city law enforcement from honoring civil immigration detainers by holding people in custody past their release date.
Kayla Mamelak Altus, a spokesperson for Adams, said the mayor “supports the essence” of the city’s policies but has urged the City Council “to reexamine them to ensure we can effectively work with the federal government to make our city safer” when it comes to dealing with “violent criminals.” She added: “So far, the Council has refused.”
A representative for the City Council did not immediately return a request for comment.
The suit comes after Trump officials on Monday blamed the city’s sanctuary policies for the shooting of a Customs and Border Protection officer in a Manhattan park over the weekend. The officer was off duty and not in uniform at the time.
Authorities have said the two men apprehended in connection with Saturday’s robbery-gone-wrong have been arrested a number of times since they entered the country illegally from the Dominican Republic in recent years. One of the men had been released following a 2024 arrest despite an active detainer, according to the lawsuit.
Police say the 42-year-old officer had been sitting with a woman in a park beneath the George Washington Bridge when two men approached on a moped. The officer, who has not been named, drew his service weapon and exchanged gunfire with one of the men. The officer was shot in the face and arm while the suspect was hit in the groin and leg.
The lawsuit says New York City’s policies violate the supremacy clause of the Constitution by interfering with the enforcement of federal law. Similar lawsuits have been filed in recent months against New York state; Colorado; Rochester, New York; Los Angeles; and elsewhere.
“New York City has long been at the vanguard of interfering with enforcing this country’s immigration laws,” the lawsuit says. “Its history as a sanctuary city dates back to 1989, and its efforts to thwart federal immigration enforcement have only intensified since.”
It says city policies limiting cooperation and information sharing with federal agents conflict with federal law.
New York Civil Liberties Union Executive Director Donna Lieberman said the city “has no obligation to redirect its resources to take on federal immigration enforcement, let alone the cruel and lawless deportation campaign the Trump regime is waging.”
“New York City’s decades-old, bipartisan sanctuary laws have made our city safer, supported our economy, strengthened our communities, and made it easier for our people to access vital services,” Lieberman said.
