Artificial Intelligence and the Displacement of Procedural Justice in Criminal Proceedings
Year: 2026
Type: conference-paper
Abstract: . The penetration of artificial intelligence (AI) tools and complex digital evidence into criminal proceedings subjects the right of defence — the core of a fair trial — to a structural test. This paper treats that right as a process running from the moment a person becomes a “suspect” to the end of appellate review, and analyses the risks of AI and digital evidence phase by phase. Its central thesis is that decisive epistemic determinations of guilt and risk are shifting from the courtroom to the design and model-training stage, where procedural safeguards find no application — eroding the equality of arms, the adversarial (dialectical) principle and the presumption of innocence in practice, if not in norm. Explainable AI (XAI) is pertinent but insufficient alone, for the law requires not mere explanation but contestability. The paper therefore proposes a layered regime of safeguards — access to evidence and decision logic, independent audit, protected access, and XAI — and locates one of its long-term preconditions in engineering itself: procedural safeguards by design will be the guarantee of fair trial in the digital age.
Author: Cüneyt, Şamil
Institution: Istanbul Commerce University
Language: English
Subfield: Law
Field: Social Sciences
Domain: Social Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W7203926541