United States v. Simmons
U.S. District Court, Eastern District of North Carolina, Eastern Division · E.D.N.C. · North Carolina bar guidance
Conduct
Here a defense sentencing memorandum cited nonexistent Fourth Circuit cases, other circuits' cases, and quotations the cases lack; counsel said she filed an AI-assisted first draft.
Consequence
No sanction. The court allowed a corrected brief and later found the original memorandum violated the local criminal rules with at least 11 false statements of law.
Lesson
Here the court put its finding of false statements of law in a written opinion months after counsel had self-reported and corrected the filing.
Verified September 30, 2026
- Citation
- United States v. Simmons, No. 4:25-CR-9-FL-1, Memorandum Opinion (E.D.N.C. Mar. 10, 2026) (Flanagan, J.), ECF No. 66
- Decided
- March 10, 2026
Summary
Lorenizo Reshaud Simmons pleaded guilty to distributing 40 grams or more of a fentanyl mixture and objected to the drug-quantity calculation in his presentence report. On October 3, 2025, six days before the original sentencing date, defense counsel Lauren H. Brennan filed a sentencing memorandum (DE 43) that, the court found, "contained a number of errors in its citations, quotations, and case references." Among the examples the court listed: "United States v. Hazel, 696 F.3d 473, 478 (4th Cir. 2012)," where "[t]here is no such case"; "United States v. Angel, 102 F.3d 1066 (4th Cir. 1996)," where "[t]here is no such case, nor any case from the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit using that quoted language"; Brehm and Nealy, cited as Fourth Circuit cases but in fact Eleventh Circuit cases without the attributed language; Edwards, which "does not contain the quoted language"; and Harrison, a Fifth Circuit case. It concluded that "nearly all cases citations" in the memorandum were to cases that did not exist, were decided by a different court, or addressed different topics or contained different quoted text. At the October 9 hearing, counsel raised the errors on her own initiative and explained that she had used AI to frame her argument and then filed her first draft instead of her final version.
- AI tool:
- Unnamed AI tool (defense counsel told the court at the October 9, 2025 hearing that she "typed some things in on A.I." and filed a first draft by mistake; the court found the memorandum "bore the hallmarks of generation, at least in some parts, by Artificial Intelligence"; no tool is named)
How did the court address the AI-related conduct?
At the October 9, 2025 hearing, the court allowed counsel to file a corrected brief, noting "there are lessons to be learned," and continued the hearing; an amended sentencing memorandum followed (DE 45). In its March 10, 2026 Memorandum Opinion, entered on the day of the third sentencing hearing, Judge Louise W. Flanagan found that the original memorandum "was filed in contravention of the Local Criminal Rules because it contained at least 11 statements of law which were 'false statement[s] of . . . law,'" citing Rule 3.3(a) of the Rules of Professional Conduct and its comments, and that it did not include argument "with appropriate citations" under Local Criminal Rule 47.2. The opinion discusses the "[g]rave consequences that can result from using AI as a tool for drafting memoranda and other legal documents." It imposes no monetary or other sanction on counsel and makes no referral. On the merits, the court overruled the defendant's objections on the fentanyl analogue, the premises enhancement, and one PSR paragraph, and sustained his objection to any drug quantity above base offense level 28.
Why does United States v. Simmons matter for law firms using AI?
Simmons shows a court memorializing a citation problem well after it had been corrected. Defense counsel’s October 3, 2025 sentencing memorandum, filed ahead of the first sentencing hearing, cited cases the court could not find, attributed Eleventh and Fifth Circuit decisions to the Fourth Circuit, and quoted language the cited cases do not contain. In preparing for the hearing, the court concluded that the memorandum “bore the hallmarks of generation, at least in some parts, by Artificial Intelligence.” At the hearing, counsel raised the errors herself and explained, in the words the opinion quotes from the transcript, that she “typed some things in on A.I.” and later filed her first draft “as opposed to my final version which has the actual case citations in the Fourth Circuit that are correct.”
The court allowed a corrected brief and continued the hearing, and the case proceeded through two more sentencing hearings. When it issued its March 10, 2026 Memorandum Opinion resolving the presentence report objections, it set out the citation history and made a formal finding: the original memorandum “was filed in contravention of the Local Criminal Rules because it contained at least 11 statements of law which were ‘false statement[s] of … law,’” and it lacked argument “with appropriate citations” under Local Criminal Rule 47.2. The court also explained why such errors are costly, noting that “the fact of filing by an attorney casts the appearance of accurate, pertinent authorities” whose “falsity only can be revealed by careful scrutiny.”
The opinion imposes no sanction and makes no referral, and the defendant’s objection on drug quantity was partly sustained on its merits. Firms documenting compliance may wish to consider that, in this case, the court treated the filing of an unverified draft as a Rule 3.3 and local-rule problem in its written opinion even though counsel had self-reported, corrected the filing, and faced no penalty.
Implications for your firm
Operational steps a firm reading this case may wish to consider documenting. Strategic and rule-application calls belong to your firm's attorneys.
- Verify that the filed version of a brief is the final, cite-checked version. Here counsel told the court she had filed her first draft instead of her final version.
- Document cite-checks for sentencing memoranda. The court found that nearly all the case citations in this memorandum were wrong in court, existence, topic, or quoted text.
- Consider that self-reporting may not end the matter. Counsel raised the errors on her own initiative and was allowed to correct them, but the court still recorded a local-rule violation in its written opinion.
Sources
Primary sources
- The account of counsel's AI use is the court's block quotation of counsel's statement at the October 9, 2025 hearing (the opinion cites the transcript, DE 58, for the adjacent "really scary" and "lessons to be learned" quotations); the transcript itself was not read, and the opinion names no AI tool.
- The opinion says "Eleven such examples follow" but the text lists six citations (Hazel, Angel, Brehm, Nealy, Edwards, Harrison); the entry describes only the six it lists and the court's finding of "at least 11" false statements of law.
- The corrected and amended memorandum (DE 45) was not read; the opinion does not say whether it cured every error.