The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

D.E.I. + A.I. = O.M.G.!

Posted on | March 22, 2026 | No Comments

Clayton County prosecutor Deborah Leslie

One of my sons is a lawyer, and the youngest is currently a first-year law student, and the stories they tell me about the use of AI (artificial intelligence) by both law students and practicing lawyers are disturbing. You may think “fake news” is bad, but fake law is much worse. Last year, I wrote about Stanford Professor Jeff Hancock who calls himself a “misinformation expert,” who was enlisted as an expert witness by Minnesota Attorney General Keith Ellison in a case about so-called “deep fake” videos. Hancock was disqualified after his AI fakery was discovery:

Attorney General Ellison concedes that Professor Hancock included citations to two non-existent academic articles and incorrectly cited the authors of a third article. Professor Hancock admits that he used GPT-4o to assist him in drafting his declaration but, in reviewing the declaration, failed to discern that GPT-4o generated fake citations to academic articles.
The irony. Professor Hancock, a credentialed expert on the dangers of AI and misinformation, has fallen victim to the siren call of relying too heavily on AI — in a case that revolves around the dangers of AI, no less.

What happens, of course, is that people get lazy, relying on computer programs to do their work for them. And this is causing all kind of problems in education, as well as in the actual practice of law. If you’re a lawyer using AI to help write your briefs, it’s important to double-check the results because AI programs are known to “hallucinate” fictitious cases sometimes — and it’s a disaster if you get caught using those:

There was turmoil in a Georgia courtroom on Wednesday as AI-generated deficiencies in the state’s legal filings threatened to upend proceedings in an appeal lodged by a woman convicted of murdering an older man in a citizen’s arrest gone horribly wrong.
In December 2023, Hannah Payne, 25, was convicted on two counts of felony murder, three counts of possession of a weapon during a crime, and one count each of malice murder, aggravated assault, and false imprisonment over the May 2019 death of Kenneth Herring, 62.
The defendant was subsequently sentenced to life in prison with the possibility of parole after serving at least 43 years behind bars. . . .

Permit me to interrupt the narrative here to explain to anyone unfamiliar with Georgia: Clayton County is a Southside suburb of Atlanta. The population is 69% black and only 9% white. Needless to say, Clayton County is heavily Democratic. In 2024, Kamala Harris got 84% of the vote in the county, which is home to the Atlanta airport. And, in regard to this case, it is important to note that Hannah Payne is white, while the man she was convicted of murdering is black. Back to the narrative:

Payne quickly appealed her sentence and conviction citing ineffective assistance of counsel. After losing her motion for a new trial in late summer 2025, the appellate effort made its way before the Georgia Supreme Court this week.
During oral arguments, one of the justices noted that certain components of legal filings from the lower court did not appear to have legal justification.
“In reviewing the trial court’s order denying the motion for new trial, there are at least five citations to cases that don’t exist, and there’s at least five more citations to cases that do not support the proposition for which they’re cited, including three quotations that don’t exist,” Chief Justice Nels S.D. Peterson said.
An attorney for the state denied knowledge of the fabricated citations.
“I did prepare an order, that order was revised,” Deborah Leslie, representing the Clayton County District Attorney’s Office, said.
This answer received a quick riposte.
“Those nonexistent cases were cited in your initial brief opposing the motion for new trial,” the justice told the prosecutor.
To which Leslie replied: “Your Honor, I’m not aware of that, but I would be glad to research and provide the court with a supplement.”

Keep in mind that this is a high-profile murder case in Georgia, a case with an obvious racial angle in a state with a long history of difficult race relations, being argued in front of the state supreme court, and the D.A.’s office has just been caught using fake citations in its motion, and the prosecutor’s response is, “Your Honor, I’m not aware of that.” Good Lord!

Everybody on X immediately started shouting “DEI!” Far be it from me to accuse others of racism — “RAAAAACISM!” — but just because the lawyer is black doesn’t mean she’s a DEI hire, and plenty of white lawyers have similarly been caught using fake citations generated by AI.

While I was not able to locate background information on Deborah Leslie, I was able to find an organizational chart for the Clayton County District Attorney’s office, which shows that Leslie’s boss is Chief Assistant District Attorney Zina Pitts. who has been a lawyer in Georgia for the past 25 years. The fact that Pitts and Leslie are both black women, as is District Attorney Tasha Mosley, is not the result of “DEI” policy, it just reflects the demographics (and political leanings) of Clayton County.

Tasha Mosley was appointed DA of Clayton County in 2019 by Georgia’s Republican Gov. Brian Kemp. She is an alumna of SMU, got her law degree at John Marshall Law School in Atlanta, and has been practicing in Georgia for 30 years. She has been reelected to the office since her appointment seven years ago, and while I have no interest in praising her, this current brouhaha is the first time the Clayton County DA’s office has bungled anything so badly as to attract nationwide attention.

Let’s talk about the facts of the case:

On May 7, 2019, Payne and a semi-truck had a green light when Herring breezed through a red light in his Dodge Dakota pickup truck, causing a minor crash with the semi-truck. Testimony at an earlier hearing suggested that Herring stayed at the scene of the crash for roughly 15 to 20 minutes before ultimately getting back in his truck and driving away.
Payne, who was not involved in the initial crash, pulled over and called 911, she testified on Monday.
A witness — a state corrections officer with medic training — also saw the crash and came up to speak to Herring, a detective previously testified. Based on his training, the witness suggested Herring was having a medical emergency — a diabetic shock or something of that nature. For example, Herring was disoriented, displayed red-orange eyes, and had walked around his truck several times.
But Payne thought Herring was drunk — toxicology tests would later show Herring had no drugs or alcohol in his system.
“He’s OK, but he’s definitely inebriated,” the officer said at one point, according to Payne. This alleged claim prompted her and the semi-truck driver to ask at the same time: “Do you mean he’s drunk?”
After Herring left the initial crash site, however, Payne had settled on the idea that he was drunk. She got back into her Jeep and pursued Herring despite being told at least once by 911 not to do so.
“I saw him stopped in the turning lane, so I turned as well,” Payne testified. “When I stopped, I was under the impression, with having 911 on the phone, that I could be a messenger.”
Payne said she initially only intended to get the driver’s license plate information, which she said the 911 dispatcher had asked of her.
Prosecutors argued the audio from the 911 call shows the dispatcher was adamant that Payne not pursue Herring. The audio is also clear the defendant was adamant she was going to go after him.
“He is drunk. I’m not,” Payne told the dispatcher before the fatal confrontation. “I’m sorry, but I’m here to tell you I’m not not going to follow him because he is going to cause an accident.”
After the two shouted at one another for a few moments, Herring reached out of his truck and grabbed her, Payne testified on Monday. She claimed he ripped her shirt with the grab and eventually “mashed the gas,” briefly dragging her forward with his car.
Payne said she never stopped trying to pull away from Herring and eventually announced that she had a gun to try and get her alleged assailant to let her go. That’s when Payne admittedly drew the gun.
“I pulled it out and immediately started trying to just continue to push against the door with it — like push it away from him” she testified. Then, she said: “He grabbed my hand with the gun in it.”
All the while, the defendant said, she screamed for Herring to stop.
“As he’s pulling it is when it — the trigger went off,” she testified. “After it went off, my entire body kind of fell backwards.”
The state, on the other hand, proved during the trial, relying on witness testimony and recordings, that Payne actually cut Herring off with her car, then jumped out and “very aggressively” ran up to Herring’s car, cursed at him, immediately started punching the confused man through his window, took out her gun, threatened to shoot him twice, and “immediately” shot him.

The facts are disputed, but what is clear is that Payne believed that Herring, who ran a red light causing an accident and then left the scene of the accident, was a danger to other motorists. She claims she fired in self-defense during a struggle over the gun. But even if the jury didn’t buy that explanation, Georgia law still recognizes the right to use deadly violence in defense of others. Payne’s appeal argues that her defense attorney failed to get the court to instruct the jury properly on that, as well as on Georgia’s “citizen’s arrest” statute, which was still in effect in 2019, although it was repealed in 2021 after the Ahmaud Arbery case.

It’s worth noting that the NAACP called upon its supporters to “pack the courtroom” for Payne’s sentencing hearing.

Did Hannah Payne receive a fair trial? Considering the basic demographic and political facts about Clayton County, is it possible that any white defendant in such a situation — claiming self-defense in an interaction with a black person — could receive a fair trial?

Perhaps others are not concerned about this, and certainly I would not “play the race card” were it not for the fact that the NAACP already played it. Let the authorities in Clayton County reflect on what it might mean to their community if it were nationally regarded as a “no-go zone” for white people (as many locals already do). Now add to that the embarrassment of the District Attorney’s office using non-existent citations in an appeal of the case, and it’s not a good look for Clayton County. The state Supreme Court is not very happy.



 

Category: Crime, Georgia, Racism

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