A citation to a case that never existed reached the high court in a prosecution of an 11-year-old boy. Court documents show Ravinder Dhillon, a senior crown prosecutor in the Crown Prosecution Service’s rape and serious sexual offences unit, submitted a detailed reference to a case she called CPS – R v J [2024] EWCA Crim 3529. The case did not exist. The Guardian understands the citation came from an AI response generated during an internet search.
Dhillon was arguing in favour of prosecuting the boy, accused of raping his seven-year-old sister, in a challenge brought by his lawyers. They alleged prosecutors had failed to take into account representations from social workers, youth workers and a forensic psychologist. Dhillon decided in April to proceed with the prosecution, and the chief crown prosecutor confirmed that decision. Only in October did she admit the nonexistent citation had been made in error, saying she had meant to refer to a real decision from 15 years earlier.
Two senior high court judges called her explanation “unsatisfactory”. Brian Flanagan, associate professor of law at Maynooth University in Ireland who investigates the use of AI by judges, went further. “This was used as a legal source to argue for the prosecution of a child and that legal source doesn’t exist: that’s a serious failure,” he said. The case, he added, “calls into question norms of trust in the law where we treat authorities as precious things. You can’t make them up; it’s out of bounds.” Flanagan noted that AI increases the risk of such errors because of the time it saves, and that the stakes change when the professional involved works for the state, “because the power of the state is immense”.
This is only the second known case involving the CPS itself. In February the agency admitted that one of its lawyers, acting in an extradition case involving two Romanians convicted of minor offences, had cited nonexistent legal authorities, likely caused by AI. Those invented cases were spotted only when opposition lawyers could find no trace of them, after which the CPS concluded “the risk of recurrence was low”. That conclusion has now been overtaken by events.
The high court said the fictitious reference did not affect the outcome of the boy’s challenge, which is listed to go to trial in the youth courts later this week.
Asked for comment, the CPS pointed to a strict AI policy “which limits its use so that it is not used to make legal decisions and there must be human checks for accuracy”. A spokesperson said the service “identified an error had occurred from conducting legal research using the internet”, that it was “remedied” once found, and that an internal review checked no other cases were affected. Learnings shared afterward included “that case law must be cited from trusted legal sources”.
Meanwhile, the wider picture is of a system struggling to police AI at the point of delivery. In June 2025 the high court, responding to hallucinated citations in cases spanning housing to banking, called on the Bar Council and the Law Society to curb the problem “as a matter of urgency”. Dame Victoria Sharp, then president of the King’s bench division, warned of “serious implications for the administration of justice and public confidence in the justice system if artificial intelligence is misused”, and said lawyers misusing AI could face sanctions ranging from public admonishment to contempt of court proceedings and referral to the police.
Matthew Lee, a Doughty Street Chambers barrister who maintains a UK tracker of AI-related errors, said the latest incident brings the total to 101 confirmed, suspected and disputed entries. Many lower court decisions are never published, so he believes the identified cases may be the “tip of the iceberg”. He also flagged privacy and confidentiality risks from CPS use of AI given the sensitive information it handles, and warned that AI is creating extra work for barristers, who must spend time checking the authenticity of authorities in case papers.
The full reference URL for this report is https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2026/nov/03/a-serious-failure-cps-prosecutor-cites-imaginary-case-to-high-court-after-ai-search.