New Mexico's Supreme Court is punishing a lawyer for including AI-fabricated witnesses and fake police testimony in an appeal for his client's murder conviction. In a filing on Wednesday, the court fined Stephen Aarons $5,000 and held him in contempt for failing to "verify the factual claims and legal authority in his AI-generated brief."
The filing says the brief "contained false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses," along with "false testimony" about the shooter's clothing and appearance. Justice C. Shannon Bacon questioned how Aarons wasn't aware of the risks posed by AI during an August hearing, where he admitted to using ChatGPT and thinking it would generate a "bulletproof summary" of the trial.
"Counsel, do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what's going on in the world?" Justice Bacon said. "Because the problem with lawyers relying on AI hallucinations is an above-the-fold story every single day."
Aarons told the state Supreme Court at a hearing on August 21 that he fed a computer-generated transcript of the murder trial and other documents related to the case into ChatGPT, which outputted the fake quotes. "It's of little comfort to know that my stupidity is what brings us together this afternoon," Aarons told the court.
Aarons admitted his brief quoted "several witnesses who were never called at trial," another "witness who was called but the brief got the name wrong," and that his brief inaccurately described precedents. He indicated that he used a version of ChatGPT powered by the OpenAI o3 model, which was released earlier in 2025.
"I assumed that it generated a bulletproof summary of proceedings," he said at the hearing, explaining that he thought it would be accurate because of how widespread AI use is in the legal and medical fields. Aarons was barred from appearing before the New Mexico Supreme Court pending the outcome of any disciplinary board investigation and proceedings.
The state Supreme Court ordered the public defender office to appoint a new lawyer for the defendant, struck all previous briefs from the record, and said the case will proceed in the court's 2026-27 term. Justices lambasted Aarons during last month's hearing, expressing surprise that he didn't know AI tools could generate false information and pointing out that attorneys must verify the accuracy of information no matter where it comes from.
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