A police officer in England used Microsoft Copilot to write a victim's personal statement, instructing the AI that its "goal is to reach the highest sentence" and asking it to produce something that would "make a judge or reader weep". The Court of Appeal heard the details on Tuesday, called the officer's conduct deplorable, and dismissed the appeal it had prompted.
The case
Jerome Gibson, 23, was jailed for 44 months last year at Nottingham Crown Court. He admitted kicking down a door and threatening his partner with a knife in May 2024, and in a separate incident barged into a police officer while fleeing, dislocating the officer's shoulder.
A victim personal statement is the document in which a victim describes, in their own words, what a crime did to them. The judge reads it before deciding a sentence; in English law it can move an offence into a "higher harm" category, which lengthens the sentence. Gibson's lawyer, Lucky Thandi, told the appeal court that the statement presented as written by his partner "had been computer-generated by the officer in the case", who had made "multiple entries" into Copilot while "intending the reader to be tearful".
"It does make powerful reading," Thandi said, "and it is plain … that this particular officer had made great efforts to ensure that the victim personal statement had read as powerfully as it possibly could."
What the judges decided
Mr Justice Lavender, sitting with Lord Justice Edis and Mr Justice Linden, confirmed the officer had asked the AI to create "the most impactful personal statement", had told it "I want you to create it so that it meets the higher harm category", and had instructed it to make the reader weep. But the court drew a line that decided the case: "These facts were not AI-generated hallucinations, but things F had stated in her interview." The machine had supplied the language; the substance came from the victim.
On that basis: "It does not appear that the use of AI, deplorable though it is, caused the appellant's sentence to be any longer than it otherwise would have." The sentence was not "manifestly excessive" and the appeal failed. The officer has been removed from front-line duties.
For the Crown Prosecution Service, Denis Barry said the sentencing judge was experienced enough to know what to weigh. His summary of the problem was sharper than the ruling: "Facts in criminal cases speak for themselves and they do not require exaggerated language … The conduct of the officer is concerning, not so much because of the use of technology, but it displays a use of evidence gathering that is concerning."
Why this matters here
Bangladesh's courts have no rule on AI-written evidence, because no one has written one. The country's police, prosecutors and lawyers have the same free chatbots as everyone else, and the same temptation: a statement, a charge sheet or a bail petition is faster to produce with a model than without. The line the English court drew is a usable one to borrow — the facts must come from the person, and the machine must not be allowed to supply emphasis the person never gave. Nothing in Bangladeshi procedure currently requires anyone to disclose that a document was drafted with AI, which is exactly the gap this case exposed.
The practical warning is narrower and applies to anyone writing anything that a court will read: a model asked to maximise emotional impact will do it, and it will do it with your facts, which is what makes the result so hard to spot and so damaging when it is spotted.
