{"id":845385,"date":"2026-09-12T15:16:17","date_gmt":"2026-09-12T15:16:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845385\/"},"modified":"2026-09-12T15:16:17","modified_gmt":"2026-09-12T15:16:17","slug":"new-mexico-lawyer-fined-for-using-ai-generated-brief-containing-fabricated-testimony-chatgpt","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/845385\/","title":{"rendered":"New Mexico lawyer fined for using AI-generated brief containing fabricated testimony | ChatGPT"},"content":{"rendered":"

A defense lawyer appealing his client\u2019s murder conviction submitted a legal brief containing \u2060made-up police testimony and \u2060witnesses fabricated by OpenAI<\/a>\u2019s ChatGPT, \u200bNew Mexico<\/a>\u2019s highest court said.<\/p>\n

The New Mexico supreme court on Wednesday fined the attorney, Stephen Aarons, and held him in contempt for failing to verify the accuracy of the court \u2060filing, which Aarons said he prepared with help from the artificial intelligence (AI<\/a>) application.<\/p>\n

The filing \u201ccontained false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses\u201d, the court said.<\/p>\n

The panel also said Aarons had \u201cdemonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern \u2060for his client\u201d. The justices fined Aarons $5,000 and said they will refer him to an attorney disciplinary board for investigation.<\/p>\n

Aarons in a \u200bstatement said he had used ChatGPT<\/a> to summarize \u200cthe trial proceedings when he agreed \u200cto take up the defendant\u2019s appeal last year, and did not understand the degree to which AI could \u201challucinate\u201d facts.<\/p>\n

\u201cI am remorseful but \u200chopeful that the disciplinary board takes into account it was an honest mistake,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is a lesson learned for all professionals who rely upon this powerful but sometimes unstable technology.\u201d<\/p>\n

OpenAI did not immediately respond to a request for comment.<\/p>\n

The court\u2019s sanction is the latest in a growing number of cases in which state and federal judges have disciplined lawyers for submitting court documents generated by AI tools without adequately vetting them. Some judges have also faced scrutiny over the use of AI themselves.<\/p>\n

Dozens of lawyers \u200chave been sanctioned for filing briefs in which AI made up case citations or misquoted the law. Aarons\u2019 filing appears to have gone further, containing fabricated witness testimony in a criminal appeal.<\/p>\n

Aarons, a private attorney based \u200bin Santa Fe, was handling the appeal of Oscar Renee Sandoval, who pleaded not guilty to the murder of the mother of his children before he was convicted and sentenced last year to life in prison.<\/p>\n

The appeal is still pending and was assigned on 2 September to Kim Chavez Cook, a New Mexico public defender. Cook declined to comment. The local district attorney\u2019s office also declined to comment.<\/p>\n

The \u2060state supreme court last month ordered Aarons to explain how the fabricated material, which it said \u200bappeared to include \u201cfictional statements that the shooter \u200bwas wearing dark pants and a white shirt\u201d, \u200bwas included in his primary brief in the appeal.<\/p>\n

Aarons told the court at an 21 August hearing \u200bthat he fed a computer-generated transcript \u200cand other case \u200bmaterials to ChatGPT<\/a>, presuming it would \u200bgenerate \u201ca bulletproof summary\u201d.<\/p>\n

The justices sounded incredulous that Aarons was not fully aware of how AI can make mistakes.<\/p>\n

\u201cCounsel, do you watch the news? Do you listen to the radio? Do you read anything about what\u2019s going on in the world?\u201d Justice Shannon Bacon said at the hearing. \u201cBecause the problem with lawyers relying on AI hallucinations is an \u2018above-the-fold\u2019 story every single day.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A defense lawyer appealing his client\u2019s murder conviction submitted a legal brief containing \u2060made-up police testimony and \u2060witnesses…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":845386,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[45],"tags":[182,181,507,74],"class_list":["post-845385","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-artificial-intelligence","tag-ai","tag-artificial-intelligence","tag-artificialintelligence","tag-technology"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845385","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=845385"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/845385\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/845386"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=845385"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=845385"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=845385"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}