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New Mexico lawyer held in contempt for ChatGPT-fabricated witnesses in murder appeal
2026-09-30
New Mexico attorney Stephen D. Aarons was held in direct contempt by the New Mexico Supreme Court after submitting a murder-appeal brief containing ChatGPT-fabricated witnesses and testimony, including two wholly invented people ('Danny Stanton' and 'Linda Stanton'); Aarons told the court and Reuters he assumed the tool would produce a 'bulletproof summary of proceedings,' per 404 Media's September 30, 2026 report.
Significance 1: An individual, now-familiar pattern of attorney malpractice via fabricated AI-generated citations, logged for aggregate pattern tracking only.
operational Adoption outcomes
Sources
- press Lawyer Cites ChatGPT-Invented Fake Witnesses in Murder Appeal retrieved 2026-10-01