A divided Michigan Supreme Court released its 39-page decision in People v Warner (163805) last Thursday.
I deleted the Syllabus pages and put Claude.ai (a next-generation AI assistant) to work on the majority and dissenting opinions by creating tables showing the areas of disagreement and agreement.
Here is the prompt:
Create a three-column table that outlines the key argument differences between the majority and dissenting opinions in the attached decision. Create another three-column table that outlines the areas of agreement between the majority and dissenting opinions.
Claude.ai’s response:
Here are two tables outlining the key differences and areas of agreement between the majority and dissenting opinions:
Key Argument Differences:
Issue Majority Opinion Dissenting Opinion Addressing due process issue before indigency determination Appropriate to address the legal question first, then remand for indigency determination Improper to decide legal impact of indigency before determining if defendant was actually indigent; amounts to an advisory opinion Whether defendant showed expert would assist defense Defendant sufficiently showed expert would aid defense by explaining false confession characteristics Defendant failed to show reasonable probability expert would assist; no evidence confession was false or coerced Whether denial of expert resulted in unfair trial Denial created reasonable probability of fundamentally unfair trial given centrality of confession No showing trial was fundamentally unfair without expert; confession contradicted victim’s account Interpretation of Kennedy standard Focuses on whether veracity of confession was significant factor at trial Questions whether “significant factor” test from Ake applies broadly to all expert requests under Kennedy Areas of Agreement:
Issue Majority Opinion Dissenting Opinion Trial court error in interpreting Kowalski Agreed trial court erred in reading Kowalski as categorical bar on false confession expert testimony Agreed trial court erred in its interpretation of Kowalski Need for indigency determination Agreed an indigency determination is required Agreed an indigency determination is required Standard for expert funding Applied Kennedy standard requiring reasonable probability expert would assist and denial would result in unfair trial Agreed Kennedy standard applies, though disagreed on its application
Others may have different observations but it is noteworthy that, on its first attempt, Claude.ai left out that the partial dissent agreed with the majority opinion that it was appropriate for the Michigan Supreme Court to deny leave on the separate question about whether the prosecutor could not retry him on the charges that had earlier been dismissed by nolle prosequi.
That important omission is a good reminder of how these AI tools can be a helpful starting point but one should not assume that the analysis is complete. These tools may continue to improve with time. But this is where we are at.