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.
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 2026-09-04). Data: CC BY 4.0.