Argentine Court Annuls Sentence After Judge Uses ChatGPT to Draft Ruling
An Argentine court annulled a theft conviction after discovering that the judge had used ChatGPT to draft the ruling, with the AI assistant's instruction to copy and paste text left visible in the decision. The court found this violated the principle that judicial decisions must be made by a responsible human authority, and ordered a new trial before a different judge.
What happened
On 4 June 2025, Judge Carlos Rogelio Richeri issued a sentence condemning Raúl Amelio Payalef to two years and six months of effective prison for theft. The ruling contained a phrase from an AI assistant: "Aquí tienes el punto IV reeditado, sin citas y listo para copiar y pegar" (Here you have section IV rewritten, without citations and ready to copy and paste), indicating that ChatGPT had been used to draft the decision.
On 16 October 2025, the Cámara Penal de Esquel annulled the sentence on its own initiative, finding that the accidental inclusion of the AI assistant's prompt revealed the judge had used an artificial intelligence system to write the ruling without proper human supervision or control.
Reported impact
The annulment means the conviction is void and a new trial must be held before a different judge. The court found that the phrase exposed a fundamental breach of the principle of natural judge, which requires decisions to be made by a competent, independent and responsible human authority, not by an automated system.
Index analysis
The court stated that the "evidence of copy and paste" created too wide a gap to determine how much of the ruling was attributable to the AI system and how much to the judge. Without a record of what was asked of the program, what was obtained, and how it was integrated into the reasoning, the decision lacked verifiable grounds and could not be reviewed for soundness.
Governance controls
The court found that the judge failed to exercise proper human supervision and control when using the AI tool. The sentence was signed with a citation from the AI assistant but did not record the use of AI, what was asked of the program, or how the responses were incorporated into the judicial analysis.
The Cámara Penal ordered the case forwarded to the Superior Tribunal de Justicia de Chubut for investigation of the judge's conduct.
Classification
Sources and evidence
Sources not yet published
This record was researched and written by the Index from original reporting. Its sources are still being verified by an editor, and they are listed here once that check is complete. Until then the record carries no reviewer.