What happened
In a criminal trial in Cali, Colombia, the defence found a draft conviction in the digital case file on 19 September 2025, before closing arguments had been made, according to a judgment of Colombia’s Supreme Court of Justice.
The trial court said a senior clerk had uploaded the draft by mistake. It said the document was meant only for the judge to add the parties’ closing arguments.
The Supreme Court said the draft contained an evidentiary analysis apparently prepared with the support of a generative AI tool. The draft included: “¿Desea que elabore un borrador de análisis probatorio para incluir en la sentencia o una valoración jurídica más formal del testimonio?” (Would you like me to prepare a draft evidentiary analysis to include in the judgment, or a more formal legal assessment of the testimony?)
The defence asked for the judge to be removed. The judgment records that the judge rejected the request on 1 October 2025, and another Cali criminal court rejected it on 7 October. On 23 October, the Superior Court of Cali refused the defence’s constitutional complaint, known as a tutela.
What an auditable version would have shown
The Supreme Court found that the AI material went beyond simple mechanical help, a style correction or a neutral summary. It was an evidentiary and legal analysis.
The Supreme Court said it did not know whether that analysis was finally included in a judgment.
The Court said Agreement PCSJA24-12243, the judiciary’s rules on AI, does not allow AI systems to replace the assessment of evidence or judicial decision-making.
An audit record would show what was given to the AI tool, what it returned and where that material was used.
Where the gap was
On 2 December 2025, the Supreme Court held that having the draft conviction in the case file compromised the judge’s objective impartiality.
The Court reversed the Superior Court’s decision, set aside the decisions refusing the judge’s removal and ordered the criminal trial to go to the next court in turn. It said this did not mean the trial itself was annulled. The Court also urged the original court to follow Agreement PCSJA24-12243 strictly if it uses AI in future.
A ConductRecord keeps each request made to an AI tool, what it returned and the document it was used in.
ConductRecord is a Headlights design.
What governance should have looked like
According to the judgment, a further challenge, an impugnación, could be brought against the decision. If none was brought, the file would go to the Constitutional Court for possible review. The sources reviewed do not establish what happened next as of 26 September 2026.
Where judges use AI, best practice would be to record what was asked, what the tool produced and where that output was used, so it can be shown that the assessment of evidence stayed with the judge.
Failure Pattern: according to Colombia’s Supreme Court, a draft conviction containing an evidentiary analysis apparently prepared with generative AI was placed in the case file before closing arguments, compromising the judge’s impartiality.
Governance Principle: a court whose judges may use AI should be able to show when an AI tool was used on a case, what it was asked and whether its output went into the assessment of evidence.
The reference implementation of ConductRecord is open source. It lives at github.com/saffronandindia/headlights-oss, Apache 2.0 licensed and free to install. The repository is public now.