Attorney Stephen Aarons, a criminal defense lawyer in New Mexico, was sanctioned by the state Supreme Court for submitting an appellate brief containing fabricated witness testimony and misrepresented legal precedents. Aarons admitted to using the OpenAI o3 model of ChatGPT to generate the document without verifying the accuracy of the content before filing it with the court.
The court order stated that the brief included false testimony from nonexistent witnesses, such as Officer Michelle Amarillo and Officer Sanchez, as well as fabricated quotes from real individuals. Aarons also failed to inform his client, Oscar Renee Sandoval, who is serving a life sentence for murder, about the errors in the legal filing or the subsequent disciplinary issues.
As a result of the incident, the New Mexico Supreme Court barred Aarons from appearing before the court pending further investigation and imposed a fine of $5,000 to be paid to the State Bar of New Mexico Client Protection Fund. The court struck all previous briefs from the record and ordered the public defender's office to appoint new counsel for the defendant.
During a hearing on August 21, justices emphasized that attorneys are professionally obligated to verify the accuracy of all information submitted to the court, regardless of the tools used. The court noted that Aarons violated multiple provisions of the code of conduct and failed to disclose the nature of the errors to his client or the client's family.
