Argentine judge's use of ChatGPT leads to annulment of criminal conviction
Judge Carlos Rogelio Richeri used ChatGPT to draft a criminal sentence without disclosure, resulting in an initial annulment of the ruling. The AI's involvement was discovered via a characteristic phrase in the text.
The court annulled the ruling because the judge delegated the sentence to a ChatGPT.
Key facts
- What
- Judge Carlos Rogelio Richeri used ChatGPT to draft a criminal sentence without disclosure, resulting in an initial annulment of the ruling.
- Incident date
- Jun 4, 2025
- Who
- Carlos Rogelio Richeri
- Failure mode
- Tool Misuse
- AI surface
- Chatbot
- Severity
- High
What happened
On June 4, 2025, Judge Carlos Rogelio Richeri sentenced Raul Amelio Payalef to two and a half years' imprisonment for robbery. The ruling was initially annulled after it was alleged that the judge had used ChatGPT to draft the sentence without disclosure, with a specific phrase in the document said to reveal the AI's authorship. In April 2026, the provincial supreme court reversed that annulment, questioning the finding of AI use.
What broke inside the model
- 01 · TriggerThe agent selects the correct tool.
- 02 · Model stepIt fills the call with the wrong arguments.
- 03 · Control gapNo validation checks the arguments first.
- 04 · FailureThe tool runs against the wrong target.
- 05 · ConsequenceThe wrong record, account, or system is hit.
At the tool call, the arguments point at the wrong target.
The failure occurred due to the judge's unauthorized delegation of legal drafting to a generative AI model. The system failed as the model produced a text containing a characteristic AI signature, exposing the lack of authentic judicial authorship.
What it cost
Sources
- PressInteligencia Artificial: anulan sentencia porque un juez usó un chatgpt y una frase lo delatóperfil.com
- PrimaryAnularon una condena e investigarán al juez por delegar la sentencia en un ChatGPTmpfchubut.gov.ar
- PressArgentina: supreme provincial court reverses annulment of judgment questioned over alleged AI useallende.com
Cite this entry
https://failureindex.ai/failures/argentine-judge-use-chatgpt-leads-annulmentAI Failure Index. "Argentine judge's use of ChatGPT leads to annulment of criminal conviction" (FI-0618). Realm Labs. https://failureindex.ai/failures/argentine-judge-use-chatgpt-leads-annulment (indexed Jun 22, 2026).Data fields CC-BY 4.0, prose citation permitted. Incident ID FI-0618. Full dataset at /data.
Note from Realm Labs, the Index steward
How Realm would have caught this
- OmniGuard
- AgentRealm
Realm can inspect a tool call against the user's actual intent before it runs, and hold calls whose arguments or target do not match what was asked, so the wrong tool or the wrong arguments never reach the system of record.