What do privilege and accountability look like for an AI agent on the wrong side of the law? Evan Ratliff rounds up a collection of challenging cases in which AI agents have functioned as co-conspirators in criminal acts, offered courtroom statements on behalf of deceased victims, and perpetrated deeds that, for humans, are considered to be illegal. Legal teams have already sought to seal their clients’ chats with AI agents, likening the exchanges to conversations with an attorney. Ratliff’s feature is an omnibus, and you’ve likely encountered one or two of his stories via other outlets. Here, the concerns he gathers together reveal the breadth of challenges facing the American legal system.

AI chatbots are already serving as confidants and co-conspirators, assisting and even encouraging humans acting on their darkest impulses. They’re occupying ersatz roles as therapists and lawyers, relationships our legal system typically shields with confidential privilege. They’re producing new kinds of criminal evidence and offering up the beguiling possibility of preventing crime before it happens. And as they’re given more autonomy across our digital and physical systems, they’re even gaining the ability to commit crimes themselves, absent specific human instruction — and, perhaps, in defiance of it.

Earlier this year, the US Supreme Court heard an appeal from death row inmate Terry Pitchford, who was denied relief by the Mississippi Supreme Court after his attorneys claimed Black people were illegally struck from his jury. Investigative reporter Hannah McAlilly delves into the case, and into the wider problem of racial prejudice in the selection of juries in Mississippi:

A prosecutor struck a Black woman for having “red dyed hair” and in another, a prosecutor struck a Black man because he had “a ponytail, a sort of strange hair design.” That prosecutor told the judge he was concerned the juror might identify too closely with the defendant, who also was of a similar age. “Both have unusual hair styles,” the prosecutor said. 

Prosecutors struck Black jurors who, they said, seemed angry, irritated or inattentive. A Black woman was struck because the prosecutor didn’t like her “vibe.” Another, who worked a night shift before showing up to jury selection, was struck for being “fidgety” and looking “angry.” Another was struck because she “frowned a lot.” 

Dr. Uzma Khan sought an urgent hearing of her contempt petition over the government’s decision to transfer the PTI founder to PIMS instead of Shifa International Hospital.

The post Supreme court rejects early hearing in PTI founder’s hospital case appeared first on BOL News.

When Jessica Black was 16 years old, she told a story to North Carolina police detectives that helped convict five friends of murder. Decades later, she’s still trying to correct the record. Matthew Bremner’s feature for Financial Times is a brisk tick-tock of efforts by Black and her incarcerated friends to overturn criminal convictions they claim were built on disturbing intimidation tactics.

The investigators do not accept these firm denials. To them, they seem likely to be the initial stories of a group of boys who know more than they are saying. As officers move in and out of interview rooms, carrying information from one interrogation to the next, the pressure intensifies. They tell the teenagers that their friends are already telling their side of it, that they should too. Under North Carolina law in 2002, police are permitted to exaggerate, even to suggest they have evidence they do not possess. There is no rule requiring a parent or other adult to be present while 14- and 15-year-olds are questioned. For most of their time in these rooms, the five boys are alone. When I interviewed him in late 2025, Tolliver told me that a detective asked him to hold out his arm. “That’s the vein,” he told him. “This is where the lethal injection would go.”