The Fugees are a legendary group. However, one of their members, Pras Michel, was found guilty earlier this year of criminal conspiracy. However, his attorney has recently filed a motion for retrial as, allegedly, “the single most important portion” of his trial was fumbled due to an AI-generated script.
Pras has hired a new attorney as he was dissatisfied with his previous one, David Kenner, who, within the motion, is labelled as “ineffective.” The motion filed claims that the AI-generated closing argument was “damaging” to the case and was directly responsible for Michel’s guilty verdict.
Pras faced a multitude of charges, including conspiracy to defraud the United States government and two counts of making a false entry in a record in connection with the conspiracy. The emcee was allegedly involved in a scheme that had him funding political campaigns for the Malaysian fugitive Low Taek Jho.
He then made false statements about the scheme in an attempt to hide his involvement in the operation and was then found to be making foreign and conduit campaign contributions to the Malaysian national.
Pras’ previous attorney, Kenner, used the EyeLevel.AI generator that, according to the attorney himself, “turned hours or days of legal work into seconds.” However, the tool “made frivolous arguments, misapprehended the required elements, conflated the schemes, and ignored critical weaknesses in the government’s case.”
The rapper’s new legal team write that Kenner has made “an admission of guilt” and accepts that he “failed to make the strongest and most obvious argument: that there was no evidence that Michel or anyone else acted at the ‘direction or control’ of the Chinese government.”
The motion concludes by stating that “The closing argument was deficient, unhelpful, and a missed opportunity that prejudiced the defence.” The court has not granted Pras Michel a retrial as of yet.
