AI prompt left in judgment acquitting child rape defendant in Brazil
A Brazilian appeals court justice allegedly used an AI system to help draft a judgment acquitting a man of raping a 12-year-old child, leaving visible AI prompt instructions in the published decision. The National Council of Justice opened an investigation after the case received public attention.
What happened
On 11 February 2026, the Court of Justice of Minas Gerais (TJ-MG) issued a judgment acquitting a 35-year-old man of rape of a vulnerable child aged 12 and acquitting the child's mother of omission.
Page 45 of the judgment written by Justice Magid Nauef Láuar contained the AI prompt 'agora melhore a exposição e fundamentação deste parágrafo' (now improve the exposition and reasoning of this paragraph), followed by a legal passage and then a rewritten version of the same content in more concise form.
The news website Núcleo obtained and published the full judgment, revealing the AI prompt embedded in the court decision.
Reported impact
The judgment acquitted the defendant of the rape charge and the mother of the child of an omission charge, affecting the legal outcome of a case involving a child victim.
Index analysis
The presence of an explicit AI instruction in a judicial decision raises questions about the decision-making process, the role of AI in judicial reasoning, and compliance with rules governing AI use in the judiciary.
Governance controls
Parliamentarians filed a complaint with the Conselho Nacional de Justiça (National Council of Justice) following the disclosure of the judgment.
Classification
Sources and evidence
This record was researched and written by the Index, based on the following original reporting.