The New Mexico Supreme Court has fined attorney Stephen Aarons $5,000 after a murder-appeal brief contained testimony from people who never appeared at trial. The court held him in direct contempt, referred him for disciplinary proceedings and barred him from appearing there while that process continues.
Aarons said he fed a computer-generated trial transcript and other case materials into ChatGPT, then assumed its summary was reliable. The resulting brief attributed statements to several wholly fabricated witnesses, misquoted real witnesses and described legal precedents inaccurately. He admitted that he signed and filed the document without checking its factual claims or legal authority.
The court struck the previous briefs and ordered the public defender’s office to appoint a new lawyer, delaying the appeal of a client serving a life sentence. Justices stressed that the professional duty does not change with the tool: a lawyer must verify work produced by AI just as they would review a junior colleague’s draft. Aarons said he had not known AI could invent facts and called the episode an honest mistake, but the court said his client bore the consequences of that failure.