ChatGPT invented witnesses who never existed, and the lawyer was fined

New Mexico's Supreme Court has fined a lawyer 5,000 dollars and held him in contempt after he filed a murder appeal containing testimony from witnesses who do not exist. The ruling came on Wednesday 9 September 2026.

In the court's words the brief contained "false testimony from wholly fabricated witnesses". Invented police testimony was among it.

The lawyer is Stephen Aarons, a private attorney based in Santa Fe. In his defence he said he had used ChatGPT to summarise the trial proceedings when he took on the appeal last year, and had not understood the degree to which the model could hallucinate facts.

The client pays the real price

The brief was filed for Oscar Renee Sandoval, convicted of murdering the mother of his children and sentenced to life in prison. The lawyer filed the fabricated material; the client lives with the outcome.

The court addressed that directly, saying Aarons had "demonstrated a lack of remorse and a lack of concern for his client". He has also been referred to the attorney disciplinary board.

Cases like this are no longer rare. But most have been commercial disputes, and what the model invented was usually a case citation. Here it invented witnesses, which means a man's appeal against a life sentence rested on statements nobody ever made.

Sources: Al Jazeera, The Verge.