The New Mexico Supreme Court on Wednesday sanctioned attorney Stephen Aarons and held him in contempt for submitting a brief in the murder conviction appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval that contained fabricated police testimony and wholly invented witnesses. According to the court, Aarons used ChatGPT to generate the material and failed to verify its accuracy before filing.
Aarons told the court he had tried to use ChatGPT to create a 'bulletproof summary' for his client's appeal. The filing did not merely contain incorrect legal citations - it contained false testimony attributed to police officers and witnesses who did not exist. The court said this went beyond the kind of hallucinated case citations that have drawn sanctions in other jurisdictions.
This is the latest in a growing series of legal consequences for attorneys who rely on AI-generated content without verification. The most well-known case remains the 2023 New York incident where two lawyers were fined $5,000 for citing fictitious cases generated by ChatGPT. Since then, courts across the United States have imposed increasingly severe sanctions as AI use in legal practice has expanded.
The case highlights ongoing concerns about AI hallucination in high-stakes professional contexts. Unlike incorrect legal citations, fabricated witness testimony in a criminal appeal directly undermines the integrity of the judicial process. Legal ethics experts note that attorneys have a duty of candor to the court and cannot delegate their verification obligations to an AI tool.
Aarons received a $5,000 fine. The New Mexico Supreme Court did not indicate whether additional disciplinary action would follow.
