Former Fugee Pras Michel has asked for a new trial after being found guilty earlier this year of conspiring with Malaysian billionaire Jho Low to instigate unlawful foreign lobbying campaigns. His new attorneys raise an assortment of issues which, they say, resulted in prejudiced trial proceedings, including his former lawyer's use of an AI tool to write his closing arguments.
The musician was convicted in April. The case related to what was known as the 1MDB scandal in Malaysia, which resulted in Low facing criminal charges in the US as well as his home country. Keen to lobby officials in the US, Low paid Michel who used his contacts in an attempt to influence the governments of Barak Obama and Donald Trump.
That resulted in the Fugee being charged with campaign finance violations, acting as an unregistered foreign agent, witness tampering and lying to banks.
During his trial, Michel blamed former advisors for giving him bad advice about his interactions with Low and how he spent the money that was provided by the Malaysian business man. In his latest legal filing, he is now blaming another set of advisors, the lawyers who represented him during his trial earlier this year.
He alleges that his former defence attorney - David Kenner of the Kenner Law Firm - relied on a "never-before-used" AI programme called EyeLevel-AI to write the closing arguments that he delivered in Michel's trial. The lawyer, it's also claimed, has a financial interest in the AI tool, so was keen to demonstrate its abilities.
But the AI screwed up Michel's case, his new lawyers argue. According to Law360, they claim that Kenner's closing statement during the trial earlier this year "failed to make the 'strongest and most obvious' defence arguments, rebut government evidence or refer to key elements of Michel's charges".
Not only that, but "Kenner's closing arguments also conflated the two criminal schemes Michel was accused of participating in during two different presidential administrations when they should've been addressed separately", and "additionally, he attributed a lyric from rapper Diddy's song 'I'll Be Missing You' to Michel's former group The Fugees".
As a result, Michel's new legal filing concludes, "the AI programme failed Kenner and Kenner failed Michel. The closing argument was deficient, unhelpful, and a missed opportunity that prejudiced the defence".
Assuming the new legal filing wasn't also written by robots, we await to see how the judge responds.