Incident Tracker / United States (state)
In re Stephen Aarons (Supreme Court of New Mexico, murder appeal; case number not located)
·Supreme Court of New Mexico·US-STATESanctionsunverified
The Supreme Court of New Mexico held veteran defence lawyer Stephen Aarons in contempt, ordered him to pay USD 5,000 to the client protection fund, removed him from a murder appeal and referred him to the state Disciplinary Board after his ChatGPT-assisted brief invented witnesses and testimony. All briefs were struck and the appeal restarted with a public defender.
- Court
- Supreme Court of New Mexico
- Date
- 2026-08-21
- Who used the AI
- Lawyer
- AI tool
- ChatGPT (per counsel's account)
- Conduct
- Santa Fe defence lawyer Stephen Aarons loaded trial transcripts into ChatGPT to produce a summary and filed a murder-appeal brief referencing several nonexistent witnesses and fabricated testimony attributed to a real witness. His client, serving a life sentence, was not told of the sanctions hearing.
- Outcome
- Sanctions
- Penalty
- US$5,000
- Regulatory outcome
- New Mexico Disciplinary Board: Court referred counsel to the Disciplinary Board (per Santa Fe New Mexican report). No disposition on record. (2026-08-21)
- Status
- Unverified — pending primary-source confirmation
- Last checked
- 2026-09-03
Primary sources for this incident
Related regulation records for this incident
No related regulation record has been linked to this incident yet.
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Cite this record
SafeLegalAI Global Legal AI Incident Tracker, “In re Stephen Aarons (Supreme Court of New Mexico, murder appeal; case number not located)”, safelegalai.com/tracker/nm-supreme-court-aarons (accessed 2026-10-07). Data: CC BY 4.0.