>Legg’s affidavit did not disclose that police used facial recognition as part of their identification. He failed to say that Clearview AI issues a disclaimer saying its facial recognition reports are not admissible in court, according to testimony.
>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.” The filing adds that police also conducted interviews in the case, but it does not say who was contacted or the information provided.
I have zero compassion for prosecutors when the State lies.
The State has near-limitless resources, therefore they MUST be held to the highest of standards.
I'd even be in favor of censuring/firing the investigator involved who left information out of the warrant. Future defense attorneys will be able to bring this up on every affidavit or testimony he gives and some portion of cases will fall apart as a result of this.
Local prosecutors and police do not have limitless resources… poorly used and a lot maybe, but I think people would be surprised what the constraints are.
> Local prosecutors and police do not have limitless resources
Technically true but just a lawyer's time (for "free") is significant. Throw in other prosecutors, investigators, etc and it begins to look "limitless". And beyond that, with a gun charge, it could be escalated to the state level pretty quickly. Alternatively, if he illegally possessed it - common if there are drugs - it could qualify for Federal charges.
It's up to the prosecutor(s) to decide what the charges are and at what level, therefore they get to decide what resources to expend.
It's interesting that this article seems to be written under the assumption that the AI was entirely correct and Qeyeon Tolbert is the murderer, but the pesky fact that the police used a magic guessing box to identify him is a mere formality that's getting in the way of justice.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home. ... Police believed the shooter looked like Tolbert because he had the same “build, hair style, clothing and walking characteristics,”
So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.”
Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information. Similar problem to K-9 units, the walking search warrant who will alarm on anybody the police want them to.
I have to wonder whether the legal points would have been satisfied if they'd just taken the 'Parallel Construction' route and followed the man around until they noticed a turn signal was out, and then "recognized" him spontaneously from the video. Given that they're often permitted to do this, were they just too lazy to do it?
Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
So they racially profiled him by only considering characteristics which excluded race?
Article appears to say the cops started with video of both the murder and a guy at a nearby convenience store that looked like the murderer--according to humans. AI was used to narrow down a short list of people who looked like the guy in the latter video. Cops then decided if any indeed did look like him, and also lived in the right area to appear on those surveillance videos. Not sure if that should be enough, but the use of AI doesn't really seem critical.
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
My understanding is that they connected the weapon to the murder and thus got the criminal. The problem, from my understanding, is that the "connection" was illegal and as a result they have to remove the evidence (the gun). Without that, they have no case.
That's a misunderstanding then. They found a weapon and are claiming a connection, but you should not believe a connection just because the police claim it.
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon". They has at least to be some connection especially that everyone and his dog has a weapon in America.
More importantly, and most people don't realize it, but the police normally find enough evidence to get the suspect to admit and take a plea.
So much of the time they don't need to get evidence to convince a jury, they just need to get the suspect to believe they have enough evidence to convince a jury.
This all "works" because in some large percentage of murder cases, everyone knows who did it, because the "tv show unexplained unexpected murder by someone random of someone they don't even know" is rare.
> You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon"
Yes, you can, and without any reference to evidence establishing that it is the murder weapon beyond it being described as “what police say is the murder weapon”, you should absolutely consider the probability that that is exactly what the police are doing.
They couldn’t connect the footage of the murder to anyone, not with AI at the time or now. It is too low quality to ID anyone. They watched live footage 6 days later of the suspect leave his place a block away from the murder location and go to a convenience store. They said he looked like the murderer footage based on “build, hair style, clothing and walking characteristics” which is pretty vague and flimsy. They took images from the convenience store footage and AI face matched it to the suspect, but the AI connection was "illegal" (it isn't illegal to use AI, it just isn't enough for a warrant and they were sloppy and didn't do any more work to get proper justification). The evidence (the gun) was collected illegally and is inadmissible (fruit from a poison tree).
As for whether he did it, and whether the gun is the murder weapon, that is still very much up for debate. They found a gun that they claim is the murder weapon. To actually know that is not easy or simple. My guess is the gun is the same caliber as the one used in the murder and the ammo still in the gun was the same brand/model as the casings or rounds recovered. So given their other evidence leading them to the house, they believe it is the murder weapon. No gunshot residue was found on the gun or clothing (which is not exculpatory, but raises more doubt).
In the end we know that the suspect.
1. Had no physical features drastically different than the murderer (walking with a limp, having an afro, being 5’ 4”, being a woman, etc)
2. Owns a 9mm handgun (standard issue police handguns are 9mm, so its not exactly uncommon)
3. Lives a block away from the murder location.
4. The murderer “stopped” in Tolbert’s apartment complex driveway before the murder.
5. “was seen running toward and away from Tolbert’s apartment immediately after the killing” which I am unsure if that just means they ran down the road and passed by the apartment as he fled.
6. No belongings were found from the victim at Tolbert’s apartment or, as far as I can find, anything else providing any other positive connections.
The way I read it, even if forensic analysis proved that it was the murder weapon, it's inadmissible because the search warrant where it was found shouldn't have been issued in the first place due to Clearview being used to provide the backing for a search warrant.
Story says Clearview returned 8 photos, 2 were Tolbert. Evidence connects Tolbert’s home and driveway to the killer. Why was Clearview part of the warrant at all?
> The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
Oh come on, this sounds absurd. No one is going to commit suicide because the city's EMS has a bad reputation. He was probably in shock and had just had his phone stolen so couldn't call anyone.
>So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
Gait analysis is a thing.
>hair style, clothing
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
>Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information.
>>The fusion center ran an AI-powered facial recognition search through Clearview AI and emailed its findings to Cleveland police, according to the documents.
>>That AI report turned up eight photos, two of which were pictures of Tolbert.
*Edit added:>>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert.
Please don't tilt at windmills, the police did a bad thing by not using approved tools and methods to conduct their analysis. You don't need to turn this into something more than what it is.
>>Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. >>His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
>The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
Or you know, the snitches get stitches culture.
Or perhaps once you go into shock and loose too much blood you stop making rational decisions.
>>The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
>Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
In 2020, the Cleveland PD was noted to have 67% of their officers as white while the makeup of the area is 50% black, however it should also be noted that 60% of their leadership; Chief and Deputy Chiefs are black
Gait analysis is about as accurate as bite analysis, which the FBI has concluded is less accurate than just flipping a coin. And gait analysis is actually less useful than bite analysis, since a person's gait will change based on circumstances: shoes, clothing, ground, weather, etc.
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
No, the issue is that they only looked at the first guy that their limited facial match search turned up.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
It's actually quite common for police to release some of the basic forensic details about the crime before the trial, like whether or not the suspect's fingerprints were found on the weapon, especially in cases where the coverage centers around whether they have the right person.
They had a bunch of CCTV and no name. The AI gave them a few names, they looked at its report which had photos from the guy's social media and were like 'yes that's him', and then got a warrant to go to his house and found the gun.
Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me. But it seems like the actual murderer was seen on CCTV and found with the murder weapon, and claiming AI (used as a search tool) as an illegitimate cause for the warrant is a ploy by the defence. Doing their job, sure, but it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off.
It would be different, the Prosecutor's Fallacy, if the AI->name link was used to justify guilt, but instead the standard of human facial recognition used for getting other warrants from CCTV can be used.
Yes, you can't use evidence that was obtained illegally to prosecute someone for a crime. Their guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it.
If illegally acquired evidence was admissible in court, the police would have every incentive to ignore people's rights on a regular basis, conducting illegal searches and seizures, breaking into homes without a warrant, etc., in order to obtain evidence. On balance, this is much worse for society than one guilty person going free.
How is this different from a random passerby identifying the suspect from the grocery store footage, or a police officer already knowing the suspect? They are just clues until any proof is found (ex. a gun that matches the bullets).
Assuming the police didn't lie about the connection and the warrant was issued by a judge, both of those things would be fine. The issue in this case is that the police were not forthcoming about the source of the connection, and the connection itself was from a tool that explicitly says that it is not admissible in court. The warrant was obtained based on false pretenses, making the subsequent search illegal.
A judge probably would not rule in favor of a warrant based solely on a tool whose utility is entirely unproven and which itself warns that it should not be relied upon as evidence, while they might rule in favor of eyewitness testimony.
But a random passerby also isn't admissible in court but could be used as a tip, right? If an anonymous person calls the cops and says "I heard someone say that Bob did it", there's no chance in hell that an anonymous person's hearsay could be admitted as evidence in any court, but if the cops get that tip, decide to check Bob's social media and decide that Bob looks a lot like the guy in their CCTV footage, they're not getting a warrant for a search based solely on the inadmissible hearsay, they're getting it based on their determination that the tip that they got does happen to match the footage they have. If they had to manually make a determination about whether a given person's face matched up with their CCTV footage and the warrant was issued on their determination that it does, it seems very complicated to then figure out to what extent the tip itself has to be admissible as evidence, right? Like, if a psychic called a police department with a tip and the cops put a house under surveillance and the surveillance reveals probable cause to get a warrant, should that kill the case because the tip came from supernatural sources?
Again, if the police have sufficient evidence to convince a judge that a warrant is justified, it doesn't really matter what the evidence is, only that it is not misrepresented to the judge and that the judge deems it sufficient.
The main problem in this case was the fact that the police misrepresented their evidence to the judge. It is theoretically possible that a judge may have issued a warrant on the basis of the facial recognition tool, in which case the evidence from the search would not necessarily need to be thrown out. If that were the case, I'd expect the defense to appeal the validity of the warrant, in which case all the questions you're asking would come into play.
Because for a random passerby you can have them withness and be responsible for the withness statement. Clearview can fill their database with crap, or even fake some data, to manipulate the police investigation. Because Clearview knows this is not only possible, but also likely, the database matches their should not be used as any evidence. If such tools are used, a lot of innocent people are arrested and just arresting you for a murder, even not guilty, will destroy your life.
I always hear this argument of "how is this different from XYZ?" when it comes to applying novel technology.
If Clearview AI is indeed functionally equivalent to some random passerby, then what value-add does it actually have over that baseline? Either it's really the same and there's no value to justify deploying it. Or there's something else at play (say, scale) that's worth examining on its merits and risks.
Law enforcement use of AI isn't illegal in Ohio, just that software claims to be inadmissable. Hearsay is often inadmissable. But my understanding is that's because it is not reliable, not because it poisons subsequent investigations with illegal forbidden knowledge once a detective hears thirdhand that they should look into someone.
It seems like a catch-22 here to be in that position. They can't cite it for the warrant but if they don't they get accused of being misleading.
It’s not a catch-22. They can use it, and include it in the affidavit for a warrant. They’re just going to ALSO need some other evidence in order to satisfy the judge that the warrant is justified.
> Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me.
Convicting the guy is one alternative, but there's another (non-mutually exclusive) option: punish whoever conducted an illegal search. If a warrant legitimised the search, punish the judge instead. If the judge didn't know any better because he was deceived, punish whoever lied to the judge, and so on.
"Might not get a conviction" is a negligible deterrent against police overreach.
> "Might not get a conviction" is a negligible deterrent against police overreach.
But it isn't just that. It's a possible perjury charge for lying to a judge. It's the strong likelihood of ending the detective's career or at least limiting it significantly. It's the political fallout from articles like this one. It's the potential civil rights lawsuit bankrupting against the department and detective. It's the personal shame and guilt that the detective feels for knowing that it's their corner-cutting that let a murder escape justice. Imagine having to face the victim's family if this guy is acquitted...
That figure sounds right - if you're talking about prosecutors being punished.
A survey conducted by the Innocence Project, Innocence Project New Orleans, Resurrection After Exoneration and the Veritas Initiative looked at five diverse states over a five-year period (2004-2008) and identified 660 cases in which courts found prosecutors committed misconduct, such as tampering with key evidence, withholding evidence from the defendant or coercing a witness to give false testimony. [..] Of the 660 cases examined, only one prosecutor accused of misconduct was disciplined.
I wonder how well that can possibly work in practice. It can't go over great in front of a jury when someone who is going to be punished for violating the rules talks about the evidence they've obtained, advocating for its legitimacy.
> If any bullets were found and if the gun was shown to be a ballistic "match," the article neglected to mention it.
Good point - maybe I read too much into "The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon".
On the principle, I'm contending the tree wasn't poisoned. However they got the guy's name, whether it came out of some high-tech black box, or a detective remembered the guy from somewhere, or they, I don't know, employed a clairvoyant and conducted a seance, once they've looked at the guy's socials and the CCTV and seen it's the same dude, there's no poison.
> But it seems like the actual murderer was seen on CCTV and found with the murder weapon
Hold up, he was found with a gun but it does not say it was the murder weapon. Lots of people in the U.S. own guns. To call it “the murder weapon” requires hard evidence linking it to the murder.
How do we know the gun found at the suspect’s house was the murder weapon? A gun owned by one person in any given geographical area tends to be owned by at least many others.
And, is it better to let off one hundred guilty people than to convict one innocent.
claiming AI (used as a search tool) as an illegitimate cause for the warrant is a ploy by the defence
The problem here is the same as if the police had coached a witness to identify a pre-selected suspect. The police had already decided that Tolbert was their suspect (albeit without knowing his name) by the time they ran his image through the AI facial recognition, so they discarded all the other matches.
The court also noted that AI facial recognition is no different from an "anonymous informant," which cannot be used to establish probable cause under Ohio law because, very crucially, it can't be questioned under oath.
it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off
This assumes that the suspect was actually the killer. We don't know if Tolbert was the killer because the police the police conducted a bare-bones sham of an investigation, and lied about how they conducted the investigation in court. They could easily be wrong about the killer's identify, which means they would not only be putting an innocent man in prison, but also that the true killer would still be free and in a position to murder more people.
Parallel construction[0] which is the case-making step detectives leap-frogged over in this case. It would have saved the dirty day here.
Instead this is as dumb as the Attorneys who used ChatGPT to halucinate case citations in their briefs a few years back.
True, although if you read the article, they found the murder weapon in the suspect's home. The (correct) problem is the warrant issued to allow them to search the home was not issued legally.
There's a reason that chain-of-evidence/provenance/fruit of the poison tree stuff is a big deal.
The defense attorney should be commended, and the cops need to be more careful.
It totally sucks that a murderer goes free, but the reason that we need to be careful about this stuff, is because the authorities would use the exact same methodology to grab shoplifters or dine-and-dashers, and it's highly likely that there would be false positives, there.
The thing about the police, that people don't seem to realize, is that they have the power to completely destroy your life on a whim. If a cop has a bad day, you could end up homeless and alone, in a few months; regardless of whether or not you actually get convicted. That's not even counting, if they draw their gun.
That's not hyperbole. I have actually seen it happen.
what sucks here is we don't even know if a murderer went free, because the cops didn't do their jobs and prove this guy was the murderer. it's not letting a guy free on a technicality, it's making sure the cops do their jobs correctly. it's protecting our rights.
sorry, we do know a murderer went free. we just don't know if this guy was the murderer who went free, or an innocent man who's name was dragged through the mud cause a cop was lazy
If you read really carefully, they mention a gun found in the suspect's home. The article does not provide other evidence that would link the gun or the suspect with the victim. There might be such evidence, but it's not mentioned.
Even when it is run some of these things like ballistics are a lot fuzzier science than they would have you believe and the "experts" can make a report say whatever they (or the police) want
Oh absolutely. It's all borderline pseudo science depending on who you ask. But the fact that you're not even hearing about it speaks volumes.
Evidince is just like charges. They throw everything, even the most flimsy and dishonest garbage, at the wall if there's even the slightest chance of it sticking because every bit of it that the defense has to get removed costs them resources. If they're not throwing it (like when they announce manslaughter charges for something the news portrayed as murder) it's because that particular piece has less than zero chance of sticking.
The court of public opinion isn't supposed to. The state can put you in jail, so the state requires a higher standard. A random person only needs to use their best judgement. Which is how it has to be. A random person can't spend their time substantively investigating everyone who comes across their path, and doesn't have the same powers as law enforcement to do so if they wanted.
>At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause.
Face matching can be used but it is not admissible evidence in court, and so you can’t use it for a search warrant, you have to find other probable cause.
Parallel construction is the term for using a covert, inadmissible method to get your suspect, then using that illicit information to build a legitimate case that you can present in court.
Perhaps the fact that they were unable to build that legitimate case means he is innocent. Or perhaps they just got too lazy with the wrong judge this time.
Not exactly. It is used to get to certain stage of an investigation, and before proceeding, other means are found to get to that same stage. In this case, parallel construction would have been done after AI identification but before getting the warrant. The parallel construction would/should have been used to justify the warrant and make the search legal. They didn’t do that, instead choosing to write the warrant in a way that was misleading at best, lying at worst, about justification for the search. Now the results of the search are being thrown out, which included finding the murder weapon in his house. So it doesn’t sound like he is likely innocent.
I think there's a difference from "parallel construction" and what could have happened in this case.
If they felt this guy was their suspect, there's nothing against using AI to determine that they should focus on that guy and look closer. They could instigate further, even (for example) run across someone who actually told them "yeah he said he shot a dude that day" and establish other facts and legally get a warrant.
No it's not. Parallel construction is when you hear Joe has coke in his car, and choose to follow Joe, pull him over when he speeds, and develop PC for a search from that. The grounds for the search of the car are independent.
Here the AI has primed them to falsely recognize the guy. There's no independence the way there is with parallel construction.
Your example is not parallel construction either. If you hear that Joe has coke in his car you already have probable cause to search Joe's car. You don't need to wait until he speeds, since speeding wouldn't give you a reason to search his vehicle.
Parallel construction would be: you pulled Joe over for [whatever reason] and searched his car without probable cause (maybe he seemed shifty or he was being a dick) and found coke, so you subsequently went to an informant who told you that he witnessed Joe selling coke out of his car earlier on the day of the search (which would have given you probable cause to search his car if you had talked to the informant before pulling Joe over).
The basis of parallel construction is that a real investigation would have uncovered the evidence anyway. What many people don't get is that law enforcement actually has to do the legwork of a real investigation (but knowing what to look for, and where, etc.) to show that the excluded evidence should be made admissible. It's a remedy for law enforcement to cure procedural violations of due process under the Fourth Amendment.
Yes that's one of the common situations where parallel construction is required. But it still requires the police to do the parallel investigation so that they can establish that they could have come across that evidence in an admissible manner.
I don’t think this priming theory is workable. If some witness on the street gives the police a handful of names, and they discover she didn’t actually witness the crime, are they now prohibited from investigating those people because they’re “primed”?
Facial identification is particularly difficult to do right. If you lean on people at all they will pick the closest match rather than admit they don't know. Not from dishonesty, it's just that we're not that good at recognizing strangers.
Which is kind of fair enough, isn't it? AI models are right more often than they're wrong, but they're not nearly infallible enough to be used in a court. So the output of them should be treated like an intelligence tip, i.e. a fact that probably points you in the right direction for gathering more solid evidence... but has a chance of pointing you in the wrong direction entirely. Which is exactly how most of us use LLMs right now.
You would think that a real police officer would have reviewed all of the video themselves and checked the work of the facial recognition system. The software is just there to help narrow down what the officer needs to manually review. Like doing a web search and manually checking the top results to see if they are what you want.
Clearview AI, the AI in question, doesn't come out of it looking great:
> Clearview AI, a Delaware-based technology company, boasts that its facial recognition programs can be used to fight child exploitation, investigate crimes, exonerate the innocent and even identify Russian spies working in Ukraine, according to its website.
> A statement at the bottom of the facial recognition report (...), reads, in part: “These search results are not intended or permitted to be used as admissible evidence in a court of law or any court filing.”
It seems to me that Clearview AI overpromised, tried to pull a Tesla with their "this car can't legally drive itself so don't try it, wink wink" strategy, and now they have turned themselves into a liability. Usually I would be happier about news like that, but then I wonder: who are Clearview AI's customers? Which type of entity "investigates crimes" and "identifies Russian spies" in such a way that they don't need the results to be "admissible evidence in a court of law"?
Someone else mentioned Parallel Construction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction); in this case, Clearview could be used to find the suspect's social media, get better pictures, which could then be matched with other surveillance footage. or something. There's ways and means.
I assume spies in a warzone are often captured/killed without court-admissible evidence. The existence of facial recognition SW probably doesn't change that.
Can the police launder AI results through an anonymous tip line?
"Here is a picture of a guy, do you know who he is, please don't use AI (wink wink), but if you call this number apparently we can then use whatever you tell us. Wink wink."
I am clearly not a lawyer but if anonymous tips exist in police work why can't wacky flailing AI guessing machine also exist?
[Another post clarifies it is not wrong to use AI or anonymous tips, it just can't be used to establish probable cause, so the police skipped some important steps]
Per the article: "At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause."
So no, a tip (which is an informant) is not enough for a warrant.
Say they, hypothetically, the police just looked at every drivers license photo of people living in a 1 mile radius. And they find the suspect, and go to a judge saying a combination of appearance, perpetrator in suspects driveway, and criminal history gives probable cause for a search. I don’t think that’s any different.
If they came to the judge and said “an informant said we’ll find the gun here” and the informant was actually Clearview, thats obviously a problem.
Remember that the average criminal isn't the smartest, and then realize that the smart ones likely never get caught.
(Also, to be fair, it can be part of the evidence presented that the suspect was known to own a 9mm Glock, say, and that he has no reasonable explanation as to why it couldn't be located. This is usually circumstantial but that can be used to explain deficiencies in the case vs used as proof.)
It's definitely not looking good. Now that we have more open source models, for better and for worse, we have to worry about politically motivated amateur's and vigilantes too.
Mostly agree. We all know how awful swatting has been for many victims. Also personalized scams and deception at scale. I also worry about homebrew automated weaponry used for cowardly terroristic purposes and how that could imaginably be around the corner. It's a pretty scary topic to consider the depths of what can be done by individuals using these tools without regulations.
It's a little different now. Someone can deepfake or even face swap videos/images/audio and send an angry mob to someones house. Or be convinced to handle matters themselves...
"Pictures/videographic evidence doesn't lie" isn't as true now as it was 30 years ago at the amateur level. Especially with coercion and human flaws.
It couldn't lie at scale though. The amount of effort it took to doctor someones face believably onto film in the star wars era was tremendous. Now it can be done on the terabyte per second scale in an individualized fashion.
Ring camera feed could show your actually nice neighbor kicking your dog. Could show a lowly employee that pissed off a manager stealing the company stapler. Could show a spouse having an affair, fake messages (one of the highest incidents of murder in the US is due to this). Swatting on a new level by impersonating your voice. All of these are things a somewhat motivated highschooler can now do.
Imagine what an agency or enterprise could do? Especially if they intercepted your network activity to turn you into any level of puppy kicker you could imagine because of your politics, your position, or for testing out the success rate of such a program.
I'd also be pretty outraged if a member of my family was misidentified, acquitted, and then murdered by a vigilante wrongly convinced they knew who the murderer was.
Requiring that police don't taint their investigations boils down to a mere "technicality" to you?
It is better that 1,000 guilty people go free than one innocent person be held. These "technicalities" are supposed to be one of the ways we protect against that, at the same time as they are intended to protect against people's rights being violated. This is why evidence must be presented that has been gathered by methods that prevent things like this from happening.
I ultimately support the exclusionary rule, but it seems entirely fair to call other people not doing their jobs a technicality. If there were an exclusionary rule in permitting or something, where I can be permanently denied a building permit because of misconduct by someone involved in processing the permit, I’d definitely call that a technicality.
Who is "the person"? Did you see them murder your family member? Do you know for an absolute certainty they are the murderer? Or are you killing some random person that a sloppy, illegal (your technicality) police investigation happened to arrest?
As a replacement for the existing system, that seems significantly worse for the victims of police misconduct. They’d have no recourse unless it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and the officers responsible would have a Fifth Amendment right not to testify about it.
In Sweden, all evidence is admissible. If you have a warrant for say drugs, and you accidentally find someone who is kidnapped in that house, you can still use that evidence to prosecute the kidnapper.
That is also fine here, provided that the warrant for drugs was legally obtained. Even if it were not illegally obtained, finding an actual victim of kidnapping, who testifies under their own free will, would probably be enough to trigger the attenuation doctrine, which allows the admission of illegally obtained evidence when it is of sufficient distance from the illegality to "attenuate" the connection.
In America, we have the fourth amendment, a right against unreasonable searches.
In Sweden, if I don't have a warrant or probable cause, and I search the house 'cause I feel like it, and I find drugs, can I then use the evidence of the drugs that I found in court? AFAICT, that's a closer analogue here.
Because if I can, then you effectively don't need warrants: just violate the rights of the person, do the search, and see what comes of it. If something comes out of it that makes them look guilty, book 'em! /s, a bit, but the point is that if you don't bar the fruits of illegal/unconstitutional searches, the right becomes meaningless.
> If you have a warrant for say drugs, and you accidentally find someone who is kidnapped in that house, you can still use that evidence to prosecute the kidnapper.
You can here, too (the "plain view doctrine" would apply here, I believe), if you validly have that warrant, which critically, the police here did not.
I don't think you've answered the original question, though. Why is that better than e.g. prosecuting detectives for their illegal conduct? Because in a sense police in the U.S. don't need a warrant right now — sure, the evidence might be thrown out, but they effectively face no accountability for breaking the law.
IANAL but my understand is that the plain view doctrine would apply.
for example, if the police have a warrant for a 2000 Honda Civic with suspicion it was used in a hit and run, they come to the property and check the cars parked in the driveway, the garage door is open so they can see no cars there as well but they come into the house, go into your basement and find your grow operation, that would constitute an illegal search.
The grow operation was not in "plain sight", since it was behind a door in the basement and the scope of the warrant was for a 2000 Honda Civic, something not kept in basements.
Usually warrants tend to be overbroad, so the it would probably be written as "search property for evidence of hit and run" in which case they could gain access to the basement.
The same in the USA. But only if the original warrant for the drugs were obtained legally. If the original warrant was obtained illegally, all evidence obtained using that warrant is inadmissible.
Sounds like a system that makes a lot of sense for a country with a higher level of police trust. As you can probably infer from the call for prosecuting the police upthread, there’s a lot of Americans who don’t particularly trust the police and don’t think that accidents are the common case.
For what it’s worth, that specific scenario is admissible in the US as well under the plain view doctrine.
Ya it's a bit of a meta-justice system, throwing out the case doesn't seem like an ideal outcome but it punishes the prosecutors for being sloppy. Sends the message, If you want to send someone to jail for 20 years, don't be sloppy.
I think it’s more precise to say that the temporary judge ruled that this can’t go to trial when the police admit they used Clearview services. Would a human viewing the footage been more convincing to a retired judge?
That will only work if they prosecute the detectives for falsifying information on a warrant application, which they won't. The really scary part is how many innocent people could have been jailed because of sloppiness that wasn't caught.
I don't think police really care what happens after the arrest most of the time, unless it was someone they feel wronged them. I could be wrong.
Point being, letting the guy get off, the police will just blame the lawyers and not themselves a lot of the time.
You always hear, "they got off on a technicality," which means the police were sloppy and didn't do their job the right (constitutional) way, but it infers someone did something wrong in the courtroom and not the police.
The case isn’t thrown out. The evidence obtained through an illegally obtained warrant is suppressed. They can still gather and use any other evidence to prove his guilt.
>Legg’s affidavit did not disclose that police used facial recognition as part of their identification. He failed to say that Clearview AI issues a disclaimer saying its facial recognition reports are not admissible in court, according to testimony.
>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.” The filing adds that police also conducted interviews in the case, but it does not say who was contacted or the information provided.
AI or not it seems like they got caught lying.
I have zero compassion for prosecutors when the State lies.
The State has near-limitless resources, therefore they MUST be held to the highest of standards.
I'd even be in favor of censuring/firing the investigator involved who left information out of the warrant. Future defense attorneys will be able to bring this up on every affidavit or testimony he gives and some portion of cases will fall apart as a result of this.
I agree with the sentiment but
Local prosecutors and police do not have limitless resources… poorly used and a lot maybe, but I think people would be surprised what the constraints are.
> Local prosecutors and police do not have limitless resources
Technically true but just a lawyer's time (for "free") is significant. Throw in other prosecutors, investigators, etc and it begins to look "limitless". And beyond that, with a gun charge, it could be escalated to the state level pretty quickly. Alternatively, if he illegally possessed it - common if there are drugs - it could qualify for Federal charges.
It's up to the prosecutor(s) to decide what the charges are and at what level, therefore they get to decide what resources to expend.
It's interesting that this article seems to be written under the assumption that the AI was entirely correct and Qeyeon Tolbert is the murderer, but the pesky fact that the police used a magic guessing box to identify him is a mere formality that's getting in the way of justice.
Innocent until proven guilty eh?
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home. ... Police believed the shooter looked like Tolbert because he had the same “build, hair style, clothing and walking characteristics,”
So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert. The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.”
Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information. Similar problem to K-9 units, the walking search warrant who will alarm on anybody the police want them to.
I have to wonder whether the legal points would have been satisfied if they'd just taken the 'Parallel Construction' route and followed the man around until they noticed a turn signal was out, and then "recognized" him spontaneously from the video. Given that they're often permitted to do this, were they just too lazy to do it?
Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
So they racially profiled him by only considering characteristics which excluded race?
Article appears to say the cops started with video of both the murder and a guy at a nearby convenience store that looked like the murderer--according to humans. AI was used to narrow down a short list of people who looked like the guy in the latter video. Cops then decided if any indeed did look like him, and also lived in the right area to appear on those surveillance videos. Not sure if that should be enough, but the use of AI doesn't really seem critical.
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
My understanding is that they connected the weapon to the murder and thus got the criminal. The problem, from my understanding, is that the "connection" was illegal and as a result they have to remove the evidence (the gun). Without that, they have no case.
That's a misunderstanding then. They found a weapon and are claiming a connection, but you should not believe a connection just because the police claim it.
From the article:
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon". They has at least to be some connection especially that everyone and his dog has a weapon in America.
> You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon".
There is ample history of the police doing this. You should not trust them at face value the same way you do not trust the defendant at face value.
Sure you can. It’s called just making shit up. Police do it all the time, that’s what the article is about.
More importantly, and most people don't realize it, but the police normally find enough evidence to get the suspect to admit and take a plea.
So much of the time they don't need to get evidence to convince a jury, they just need to get the suspect to believe they have enough evidence to convince a jury.
This all "works" because in some large percentage of murder cases, everyone knows who did it, because the "tv show unexplained unexpected murder by someone random of someone they don't even know" is rare.
> You can't just pull up a weapon from the suspect home and call it a "murder weapon"
Yes, you can, and without any reference to evidence establishing that it is the murder weapon beyond it being described as “what police say is the murder weapon”, you should absolutely consider the probability that that is exactly what the police are doing.
At most I guess they found a cartidge that could have been fired by the suspects weapon. Bullet forensics is not that accurate.
They couldn’t connect the footage of the murder to anyone, not with AI at the time or now. It is too low quality to ID anyone. They watched live footage 6 days later of the suspect leave his place a block away from the murder location and go to a convenience store. They said he looked like the murderer footage based on “build, hair style, clothing and walking characteristics” which is pretty vague and flimsy. They took images from the convenience store footage and AI face matched it to the suspect, but the AI connection was "illegal" (it isn't illegal to use AI, it just isn't enough for a warrant and they were sloppy and didn't do any more work to get proper justification). The evidence (the gun) was collected illegally and is inadmissible (fruit from a poison tree).
As for whether he did it, and whether the gun is the murder weapon, that is still very much up for debate. They found a gun that they claim is the murder weapon. To actually know that is not easy or simple. My guess is the gun is the same caliber as the one used in the murder and the ammo still in the gun was the same brand/model as the casings or rounds recovered. So given their other evidence leading them to the house, they believe it is the murder weapon. No gunshot residue was found on the gun or clothing (which is not exculpatory, but raises more doubt).
In the end we know that the suspect.
1. Had no physical features drastically different than the murderer (walking with a limp, having an afro, being 5’ 4”, being a woman, etc)
2. Owns a 9mm handgun (standard issue police handguns are 9mm, so its not exactly uncommon)
3. Lives a block away from the murder location.
4. The murderer “stopped” in Tolbert’s apartment complex driveway before the murder.
5. “was seen running toward and away from Tolbert’s apartment immediately after the killing” which I am unsure if that just means they ran down the road and passed by the apartment as he fled.
6. No belongings were found from the victim at Tolbert’s apartment or, as far as I can find, anything else providing any other positive connections.
The way I read it, even if forensic analysis proved that it was the murder weapon, it's inadmissible because the search warrant where it was found shouldn't have been issued in the first place due to Clearview being used to provide the backing for a search warrant.
If the forensic analysis proved that it was the murder weapon, they would leak that detail very clearly to the press, to make the judge look bad.
Story says Clearview returned 8 photos, 2 were Tolbert. Evidence connects Tolbert’s home and driveway to the killer. Why was Clearview part of the warrant at all?
Clearview wasn't mentioned in the affidavit used to get the search warrant, according to the article:
> Legg’s affidavit did not disclose that police used facial recognition as part of their identification.
> The affidavit simply says the fusion center matched Tolbert to “the unidentified male suspect, based on recovered surveillance video.”
(I had to look up what a "fusion center" is, it's a cooperation between different agencies: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fusion_center)
> The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
Oh come on, this sounds absurd. No one is going to commit suicide because the city's EMS has a bad reputation. He was probably in shock and had just had his phone stolen so couldn't call anyone.
>>“build ... walking characteristics,”
>So what I'm getting is... He was a young black man.
Gait analysis is a thing.
>hair style, clothing
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
>Maybe it returned every single black male in the neighborhood and police just picked who they wanted; This is crucially relevant information.
>>The fusion center ran an AI-powered facial recognition search through Clearview AI and emailed its findings to Cleveland police, according to the documents. >>That AI report turned up eight photos, two of which were pictures of Tolbert. *Edit added:>>He also did not indicate that the facial recognition report returned several photos of people other than Tolbert.
Please don't tilt at windmills, the police did a bad thing by not using approved tools and methods to conduct their analysis. You don't need to turn this into something more than what it is.
>>Seriously wounded, Story walked the last mile to his home on School Street. >>His father found him dead in the bathtub the next day.
>The is the biggest indictment of Cleveland PD and the justice system in the entire story - you could choose to call emergency services or you could choose to risk bleeding out because of their reputation. He chose to die.
Or you know, the snitches get stitches culture. Or perhaps once you go into shock and loose too much blood you stop making rational decisions.
>>The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home.
>Oh. They said that. No details provided. Oh. Well, that's all right then.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
In 2020, the Cleveland PD was noted to have 67% of their officers as white while the makeup of the area is 50% black, however it should also be noted that 60% of their leadership; Chief and Deputy Chiefs are black
https://www.wkyc.com/article/news/local/cleveland/a-detailed...
Gait analysis is a thing.
Gait analysis is about as accurate as bite analysis, which the FBI has concluded is less accurate than just flipping a coin. And gait analysis is actually less useful than bite analysis, since a person's gait will change based on circumstances: shoes, clothing, ground, weather, etc.
If the person had dreads and a hoodey on should they be looking for a guy with short cropped hair wearing a suit?
No, the issue is that they only looked at the first guy that their limited facial match search turned up.
What proof do you need? I understand you don't want to take them at their word but it's not like the police are going to release the full forensic analysis before there is a trial.
It's actually quite common for police to release some of the basic forensic details about the crime before the trial, like whether or not the suspect's fingerprints were found on the weapon, especially in cases where the coverage centers around whether they have the right person.
They had a bunch of CCTV and no name. The AI gave them a few names, they looked at its report which had photos from the guy's social media and were like 'yes that's him', and then got a warrant to go to his house and found the gun.
Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me. But it seems like the actual murderer was seen on CCTV and found with the murder weapon, and claiming AI (used as a search tool) as an illegitimate cause for the warrant is a ploy by the defence. Doing their job, sure, but it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off.
It would be different, the Prosecutor's Fallacy, if the AI->name link was used to justify guilt, but instead the standard of human facial recognition used for getting other warrants from CCTV can be used.
> some important principle of rights
Yes, you can't use evidence that was obtained illegally to prosecute someone for a crime. Their guilt or innocence has nothing to do with it.
If illegally acquired evidence was admissible in court, the police would have every incentive to ignore people's rights on a regular basis, conducting illegal searches and seizures, breaking into homes without a warrant, etc., in order to obtain evidence. On balance, this is much worse for society than one guilty person going free.
How is this different from a random passerby identifying the suspect from the grocery store footage, or a police officer already knowing the suspect? They are just clues until any proof is found (ex. a gun that matches the bullets).
Assuming the police didn't lie about the connection and the warrant was issued by a judge, both of those things would be fine. The issue in this case is that the police were not forthcoming about the source of the connection, and the connection itself was from a tool that explicitly says that it is not admissible in court. The warrant was obtained based on false pretenses, making the subsequent search illegal.
A judge probably would not rule in favor of a warrant based solely on a tool whose utility is entirely unproven and which itself warns that it should not be relied upon as evidence, while they might rule in favor of eyewitness testimony.
But a random passerby also isn't admissible in court but could be used as a tip, right? If an anonymous person calls the cops and says "I heard someone say that Bob did it", there's no chance in hell that an anonymous person's hearsay could be admitted as evidence in any court, but if the cops get that tip, decide to check Bob's social media and decide that Bob looks a lot like the guy in their CCTV footage, they're not getting a warrant for a search based solely on the inadmissible hearsay, they're getting it based on their determination that the tip that they got does happen to match the footage they have. If they had to manually make a determination about whether a given person's face matched up with their CCTV footage and the warrant was issued on their determination that it does, it seems very complicated to then figure out to what extent the tip itself has to be admissible as evidence, right? Like, if a psychic called a police department with a tip and the cops put a house under surveillance and the surveillance reveals probable cause to get a warrant, should that kill the case because the tip came from supernatural sources?
Again, if the police have sufficient evidence to convince a judge that a warrant is justified, it doesn't really matter what the evidence is, only that it is not misrepresented to the judge and that the judge deems it sufficient.
The main problem in this case was the fact that the police misrepresented their evidence to the judge. It is theoretically possible that a judge may have issued a warrant on the basis of the facial recognition tool, in which case the evidence from the search would not necessarily need to be thrown out. If that were the case, I'd expect the defense to appeal the validity of the warrant, in which case all the questions you're asking would come into play.
Because for a random passerby you can have them withness and be responsible for the withness statement. Clearview can fill their database with crap, or even fake some data, to manipulate the police investigation. Because Clearview knows this is not only possible, but also likely, the database matches their should not be used as any evidence. If such tools are used, a lot of innocent people are arrested and just arresting you for a murder, even not guilty, will destroy your life.
so, basically - the court wants to treat Clearview's AI as an unreliable witness?
Eyewitnesses are notoriously reliable as we know
Eyewitnesses you can at least cross-examine on the witness stand.
I always hear this argument of "how is this different from XYZ?" when it comes to applying novel technology.
If Clearview AI is indeed functionally equivalent to some random passerby, then what value-add does it actually have over that baseline? Either it's really the same and there's no value to justify deploying it. Or there's something else at play (say, scale) that's worth examining on its merits and risks.
Well there isn't always a random passerby.
Both of those things are legal. That’s the difference.
The cops lied about where the suspect was identified?
So the warrant was granted from false pretense.
Law enforcement use of AI isn't illegal in Ohio, just that software claims to be inadmissable. Hearsay is often inadmissable. But my understanding is that's because it is not reliable, not because it poisons subsequent investigations with illegal forbidden knowledge once a detective hears thirdhand that they should look into someone.
It seems like a catch-22 here to be in that position. They can't cite it for the warrant but if they don't they get accused of being misleading.
It’s not a catch-22. They can use it, and include it in the affidavit for a warrant. They’re just going to ALSO need some other evidence in order to satisfy the judge that the warrant is justified.
It's a catch-22 because the defense can now attack it for being presented in court when the disclaimer says not to.
They apparently did have enough other evidence to satisfy the judge since they got the warrant without it.
> Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me.
Convicting the guy is one alternative, but there's another (non-mutually exclusive) option: punish whoever conducted an illegal search. If a warrant legitimised the search, punish the judge instead. If the judge didn't know any better because he was deceived, punish whoever lied to the judge, and so on.
"Might not get a conviction" is a negligible deterrent against police overreach.
> "Might not get a conviction" is a negligible deterrent against police overreach.
But it isn't just that. It's a possible perjury charge for lying to a judge. It's the strong likelihood of ending the detective's career or at least limiting it significantly. It's the political fallout from articles like this one. It's the potential civil rights lawsuit bankrupting against the department and detective. It's the personal shame and guilt that the detective feels for knowing that it's their corner-cutting that let a murder escape justice. Imagine having to face the victim's family if this guy is acquitted...
These are big deterrents.
Then why does this sort of thing keep happening?
This is another reason why police officers should be required to carry malpractice insurance, that they pay for.
How often does it happen? 0.1% of cases? 0.01%?
That figure sounds right - if you're talking about prosecutors being punished.
https://innocenceproject.org/why-holding-prosecutors-account...This is how it works, or is supposed to work, in Norway. Illegally gathered evidence is still evidence.
I wonder how well that can possibly work in practice. It can't go over great in front of a jury when someone who is going to be punished for violating the rules talks about the evidence they've obtained, advocating for its legitimacy.
> found the gun
If any bullets were found and if the gun was shown to be a ballistic "match," the article neglected to mention it.
> Perhaps there's some important principle of rights that's eluding me.
The legal principle involved is called "fruit of the poisonous tree."
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
> If any bullets were found and if the gun was shown to be a ballistic "match," the article neglected to mention it.
Good point - maybe I read too much into "The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon".
On the principle, I'm contending the tree wasn't poisoned. However they got the guy's name, whether it came out of some high-tech black box, or a detective remembered the guy from somewhere, or they, I don't know, employed a clairvoyant and conducted a seance, once they've looked at the guy's socials and the CCTV and seen it's the same dude, there's no poison.
> and then got a warrant to go to his house and found the gun.
The police claims it's the gun. That has not been proven, and the article doesn't present a shred of evidence.
> But it seems like the actual murderer was seen on CCTV and found with the murder weapon
Hold up, he was found with a gun but it does not say it was the murder weapon. Lots of people in the U.S. own guns. To call it “the murder weapon” requires hard evidence linking it to the murder.
How do we know the gun found at the suspect’s house was the murder weapon? A gun owned by one person in any given geographical area tends to be owned by at least many others.
And, is it better to let off one hundred guilty people than to convict one innocent.
The gun, or a gun?
claiming AI (used as a search tool) as an illegitimate cause for the warrant is a ploy by the defence
The problem here is the same as if the police had coached a witness to identify a pre-selected suspect. The police had already decided that Tolbert was their suspect (albeit without knowing his name) by the time they ran his image through the AI facial recognition, so they discarded all the other matches.
The court also noted that AI facial recognition is no different from an "anonymous informant," which cannot be used to establish probable cause under Ohio law because, very crucially, it can't be questioned under oath.
it doesn't seem like natural justice or any broader rights would be served by letting this guy off
This assumes that the suspect was actually the killer. We don't know if Tolbert was the killer because the police the police conducted a bare-bones sham of an investigation, and lied about how they conducted the investigation in court. They could easily be wrong about the killer's identify, which means they would not only be putting an innocent man in prison, but also that the true killer would still be free and in a position to murder more people.
Parallel construction[0] which is the case-making step detectives leap-frogged over in this case. It would have saved the dirty day here. Instead this is as dumb as the Attorneys who used ChatGPT to halucinate case citations in their briefs a few years back.
[0]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction
True, although if you read the article, they found the murder weapon in the suspect's home. The (correct) problem is the warrant issued to allow them to search the home was not issued legally.
There's a reason that chain-of-evidence/provenance/fruit of the poison tree stuff is a big deal.
The defense attorney should be commended, and the cops need to be more careful.
It totally sucks that a murderer goes free, but the reason that we need to be careful about this stuff, is because the authorities would use the exact same methodology to grab shoplifters or dine-and-dashers, and it's highly likely that there would be false positives, there.
The thing about the police, that people don't seem to realize, is that they have the power to completely destroy your life on a whim. If a cop has a bad day, you could end up homeless and alone, in a few months; regardless of whether or not you actually get convicted. That's not even counting, if they draw their gun.
That's not hyperbole. I have actually seen it happen.
what sucks here is we don't even know if a murderer went free, because the cops didn't do their jobs and prove this guy was the murderer. it's not letting a guy free on a technicality, it's making sure the cops do their jobs correctly. it's protecting our rights.
sorry, we do know a murderer went free. we just don't know if this guy was the murderer who went free, or an innocent man who's name was dragged through the mud cause a cop was lazy
I agree - as I say, I think the problem is correct.
If you read really carefully, they mention a gun found in the suspect's home. The article does not provide other evidence that would link the gun or the suspect with the victim. There might be such evidence, but it's not mentioned.
Running ballistics, DNA, etc. all that shit is SOP because it produces fairly good evidince for court.
"we found a gun of matching caliber" = "we ran ballistics and it didn't match"
You gotta look for what they're not telling you.
Edit: I'm assuming the bullet stayed in the guy and they recovered it here.
Even when it is run some of these things like ballistics are a lot fuzzier science than they would have you believe and the "experts" can make a report say whatever they (or the police) want
Oh absolutely. It's all borderline pseudo science depending on who you ask. But the fact that you're not even hearing about it speaks volumes.
Evidince is just like charges. They throw everything, even the most flimsy and dishonest garbage, at the wall if there's even the slightest chance of it sticking because every bit of it that the defense has to get removed costs them resources. If they're not throwing it (like when they announce manslaughter charges for something the news portrayed as murder) it's because that particular piece has less than zero chance of sticking.
I got it from here:
> The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect’s home
I think they say “a” handgun without hinting that the ballistics match.
Ballistics.
The bore of a gun is changed by every projectile that goes through it.
The court of public opinion has never held that standard
The court of public opinion isn't supposed to. The state can put you in jail, so the state requires a higher standard. A random person only needs to use their best judgement. Which is how it has to be. A random person can't spend their time substantively investigating everyone who comes across their path, and doesn't have the same powers as law enforcement to do so if they wanted.
This kind of nonsense is very much on brand for the Cleveland PD.
Here’s the crux:
>At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause.
Face matching can be used but it is not admissible evidence in court, and so you can’t use it for a search warrant, you have to find other probable cause.
Parallel construction is the term for using a covert, inadmissible method to get your suspect, then using that illicit information to build a legitimate case that you can present in court.
Perhaps the fact that they were unable to build that legitimate case means he is innocent. Or perhaps they just got too lazy with the wrong judge this time.
Not exactly. It is used to get to certain stage of an investigation, and before proceeding, other means are found to get to that same stage. In this case, parallel construction would have been done after AI identification but before getting the warrant. The parallel construction would/should have been used to justify the warrant and make the search legal. They didn’t do that, instead choosing to write the warrant in a way that was misleading at best, lying at worst, about justification for the search. Now the results of the search are being thrown out, which included finding the murder weapon in his house. So it doesn’t sound like he is likely innocent.
A gun. How do we know it was the murder weapon.
I think there's a difference from "parallel construction" and what could have happened in this case.
If they felt this guy was their suspect, there's nothing against using AI to determine that they should focus on that guy and look closer. They could instigate further, even (for example) run across someone who actually told them "yeah he said he shot a dude that day" and establish other facts and legally get a warrant.
That's parallel construction.
No it's not. Parallel construction is when you hear Joe has coke in his car, and choose to follow Joe, pull him over when he speeds, and develop PC for a search from that. The grounds for the search of the car are independent.
Here the AI has primed them to falsely recognize the guy. There's no independence the way there is with parallel construction.
Your example is not parallel construction either. If you hear that Joe has coke in his car you already have probable cause to search Joe's car. You don't need to wait until he speeds, since speeding wouldn't give you a reason to search his vehicle.
Parallel construction would be: you pulled Joe over for [whatever reason] and searched his car without probable cause (maybe he seemed shifty or he was being a dick) and found coke, so you subsequently went to an informant who told you that he witnessed Joe selling coke out of his car earlier on the day of the search (which would have given you probable cause to search his car if you had talked to the informant before pulling Joe over).
The basis of parallel construction is that a real investigation would have uncovered the evidence anyway. What many people don't get is that law enforcement actually has to do the legwork of a real investigation (but knowing what to look for, and where, etc.) to show that the excluded evidence should be made admissible. It's a remedy for law enforcement to cure procedural violations of due process under the Fourth Amendment.
I understood it to come in when the police don't want to admit intelligence from foreign sources in drug cases also.
Yes that's one of the common situations where parallel construction is required. But it still requires the police to do the parallel investigation so that they can establish that they could have come across that evidence in an admissible manner.
I don’t think this priming theory is workable. If some witness on the street gives the police a handful of names, and they discover she didn’t actually witness the crime, are they now prohibited from investigating those people because they’re “primed”?
Facial identification is particularly difficult to do right. If you lean on people at all they will pick the closest match rather than admit they don't know. Not from dishonesty, it's just that we're not that good at recognizing strangers.
Vs just "investigation"?
It's only parallel construction if the original means of determining the suspect was unconstitutional.
AI = anonymous informant. I see what the judge did there :)
He’s retired and I thought it might be accidental.
Which is kind of fair enough, isn't it? AI models are right more often than they're wrong, but they're not nearly infallible enough to be used in a court. So the output of them should be treated like an intelligence tip, i.e. a fact that probably points you in the right direction for gathering more solid evidence... but has a chance of pointing you in the wrong direction entirely. Which is exactly how most of us use LLMs right now.
> AI models are right more often than they're wrong
lol, what models are you using?
Mostly just ChatGPT 4o and o1. I feel like I get an 80% hit rate on software questions.
You would think that a real police officer would have reviewed all of the video themselves and checked the work of the facial recognition system. The software is just there to help narrow down what the officer needs to manually review. Like doing a web search and manually checking the top results to see if they are what you want.
Clearview AI, the AI in question, doesn't come out of it looking great:
> Clearview AI, a Delaware-based technology company, boasts that its facial recognition programs can be used to fight child exploitation, investigate crimes, exonerate the innocent and even identify Russian spies working in Ukraine, according to its website.
> A statement at the bottom of the facial recognition report (...), reads, in part: “These search results are not intended or permitted to be used as admissible evidence in a court of law or any court filing.”
It seems to me that Clearview AI overpromised, tried to pull a Tesla with their "this car can't legally drive itself so don't try it, wink wink" strategy, and now they have turned themselves into a liability. Usually I would be happier about news like that, but then I wonder: who are Clearview AI's customers? Which type of entity "investigates crimes" and "identifies Russian spies" in such a way that they don't need the results to be "admissible evidence in a court of law"?
Someone else mentioned Parallel Construction (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parallel_construction); in this case, Clearview could be used to find the suspect's social media, get better pictures, which could then be matched with other surveillance footage. or something. There's ways and means.
I assume spies in a warzone are often captured/killed without court-admissible evidence. The existence of facial recognition SW probably doesn't change that.
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"Optimal Functionality" my ass, just say you want to make money by trying to sell me stuff I don't want
That's the best case. With the state of ads these days you're lucky if an ad doesn't drop some malware on you
I did not see an anti-ad blocker prompt on Firefox Mobile with uBO.
Oh how I envy android users sometimes
Works fine for me in Brave -- neither warning nor ads shown.
Are anonymous tips admissible?
Can the police launder AI results through an anonymous tip line?
"Here is a picture of a guy, do you know who he is, please don't use AI (wink wink), but if you call this number apparently we can then use whatever you tell us. Wink wink."
I am clearly not a lawyer but if anonymous tips exist in police work why can't wacky flailing AI guessing machine also exist?
[Another post clarifies it is not wrong to use AI or anonymous tips, it just can't be used to establish probable cause, so the police skipped some important steps]
Per the article: "At a Jan. 9 hearing, McMonagle agreed with defense attorneys, saying the AI identification of Tolbert was akin to an anonymous informant, which is not enough to establish probable cause."
So no, a tip (which is an informant) is not enough for a warrant.
Say they, hypothetically, the police just looked at every drivers license photo of people living in a 1 mile radius. And they find the suspect, and go to a judge saying a combination of appearance, perpetrator in suspects driveway, and criminal history gives probable cause for a search. I don’t think that’s any different.
If they came to the judge and said “an informant said we’ll find the gun here” and the informant was actually Clearview, thats obviously a problem.
https://archive.ph/5LJor
This needs to be top level since a lot of people aren't even looking at where it happened.
The neighborhood it occurred in is 95% black. This isn't racial profiling.
Is the existence of such a neighborhood awful and downstream of prior generations of racial issues? Sure is.
Don't invent things out of thin air to match your priors, that doesn't help your cause at all.
Reject "AI" at all levels. Time for this useless cancer to go. Research AGI sure, but forcing this slop on us has got to stop.
They identified him based on his home address... it looks like they just used AI to narrow it down the suspects.
If you murder someone, you would probably keep the same gun at home, no?
Remember that the average criminal isn't the smartest, and then realize that the smart ones likely never get caught.
(Also, to be fair, it can be part of the evidence presented that the suspect was known to own a 9mm Glock, say, and that he has no reasonable explanation as to why it couldn't be located. This is usually circumstantial but that can be used to explain deficiencies in the case vs used as proof.)
In old days, it's called the instinct of detective.
It begins...
It's definitely not looking good. Now that we have more open source models, for better and for worse, we have to worry about politically motivated amateur's and vigilantes too.
The most dangerous use of deepfakes is the workflow for manipulating those kinds of people.
Mostly agree. We all know how awful swatting has been for many victims. Also personalized scams and deception at scale. I also worry about homebrew automated weaponry used for cowardly terroristic purposes and how that could imaginably be around the corner. It's a pretty scary topic to consider the depths of what can be done by individuals using these tools without regulations.
That was always a risk for justice in calling witnesses.
It's a little different now. Someone can deepfake or even face swap videos/images/audio and send an angry mob to someones house. Or be convinced to handle matters themselves...
"Pictures/videographic evidence doesn't lie" isn't as true now as it was 30 years ago at the amateur level. Especially with coercion and human flaws.
It lied then too. Darkroom magic is how we got star wars to look like star wars and not people standing on a plywood ledge.
It couldn't lie at scale though. The amount of effort it took to doctor someones face believably onto film in the star wars era was tremendous. Now it can be done on the terabyte per second scale in an individualized fashion.
Ring camera feed could show your actually nice neighbor kicking your dog. Could show a lowly employee that pissed off a manager stealing the company stapler. Could show a spouse having an affair, fake messages (one of the highest incidents of murder in the US is due to this). Swatting on a new level by impersonating your voice. All of these are things a somewhat motivated highschooler can now do.
Imagine what an agency or enterprise could do? Especially if they intercepted your network activity to turn you into any level of puppy kicker you could imagine because of your politics, your position, or for testing out the success rate of such a program.
Sounds like the police got their warrant by rather blatantly lying to the judge.
In a quality police department, that would be career-ending. "AI" or not.
[flagged]
I'd also be pretty outraged if a member of my family was misidentified, acquitted, and then murdered by a vigilante wrongly convinced they knew who the murderer was.
so finding the murder weapon in the home definitely means the suspect didn't do it. Right?
Requiring that police don't taint their investigations boils down to a mere "technicality" to you?
It is better that 1,000 guilty people go free than one innocent person be held. These "technicalities" are supposed to be one of the ways we protect against that, at the same time as they are intended to protect against people's rights being violated. This is why evidence must be presented that has been gathered by methods that prevent things like this from happening.
> luigi
So you're suggesting a family member murder the judge or some powerful individual whose wealth puts them above the law? That's a weird take.
not any more 'weird' than the majority of the community here supporting the murder of an innocent ceo.
Its very telling with the downvotes. You support an innocent person getting murdered and dont support the same thing happening to a murderer.
People's fundamental rights and freedoms are not technicalities.
It's not a 'technicality.' The person got off because the police didn't do their job.
Nobody else calls not doing your job right a 'technicality.'
I ultimately support the exclusionary rule, but it seems entirely fair to call other people not doing their jobs a technicality. If there were an exclusionary rule in permitting or something, where I can be permanently denied a building permit because of misconduct by someone involved in processing the permit, I’d definitely call that a technicality.
Who is "the person"? Did you see them murder your family member? Do you know for an absolute certainty they are the murderer? Or are you killing some random person that a sloppy, illegal (your technicality) police investigation happened to arrest?
What technicality?
Did you read the article? They found the murder weapon in the home and the person is getting off because of how the police found the weapon.
The US system of evidence is so weird.
It makes sense to me -- illegitimately gained evidence is inadmissible. What would you do differently, and why do you think it would work better?
Your question made me look up https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fruit_of_the_poisonous_tree
That has some examples of how other countries handle things.
Prosecute the detectives who broke the law.
You'd end up losing a lot of detectives though, which is also pretty damning.
You want to lose those that break the law.
As a replacement for the existing system, that seems significantly worse for the victims of police misconduct. They’d have no recourse unless it can be proven beyond a reasonable doubt, and the officers responsible would have a Fifth Amendment right not to testify about it.
In Sweden, all evidence is admissible. If you have a warrant for say drugs, and you accidentally find someone who is kidnapped in that house, you can still use that evidence to prosecute the kidnapper.
That is also fine here, provided that the warrant for drugs was legally obtained. Even if it were not illegally obtained, finding an actual victim of kidnapping, who testifies under their own free will, would probably be enough to trigger the attenuation doctrine, which allows the admission of illegally obtained evidence when it is of sufficient distance from the illegality to "attenuate" the connection.
(IANAL.)
> In Sweden, all evidence is admissible.
In America, we have the fourth amendment, a right against unreasonable searches.
In Sweden, if I don't have a warrant or probable cause, and I search the house 'cause I feel like it, and I find drugs, can I then use the evidence of the drugs that I found in court? AFAICT, that's a closer analogue here.
Because if I can, then you effectively don't need warrants: just violate the rights of the person, do the search, and see what comes of it. If something comes out of it that makes them look guilty, book 'em! /s, a bit, but the point is that if you don't bar the fruits of illegal/unconstitutional searches, the right becomes meaningless.
> If you have a warrant for say drugs, and you accidentally find someone who is kidnapped in that house, you can still use that evidence to prosecute the kidnapper.
You can here, too (the "plain view doctrine" would apply here, I believe), if you validly have that warrant, which critically, the police here did not.
I don't think you've answered the original question, though. Why is that better than e.g. prosecuting detectives for their illegal conduct? Because in a sense police in the U.S. don't need a warrant right now — sure, the evidence might be thrown out, but they effectively face no accountability for breaking the law.
IANAL but my understand is that the plain view doctrine would apply.
for example, if the police have a warrant for a 2000 Honda Civic with suspicion it was used in a hit and run, they come to the property and check the cars parked in the driveway, the garage door is open so they can see no cars there as well but they come into the house, go into your basement and find your grow operation, that would constitute an illegal search.
The grow operation was not in "plain sight", since it was behind a door in the basement and the scope of the warrant was for a 2000 Honda Civic, something not kept in basements.
Usually warrants tend to be overbroad, so the it would probably be written as "search property for evidence of hit and run" in which case they could gain access to the basement.
The same in the USA. But only if the original warrant for the drugs were obtained legally. If the original warrant was obtained illegally, all evidence obtained using that warrant is inadmissible.
Same in the US. What you cannot do is conduct a warrantless search and then use the evidence.
I think the key point is that you start with a valid warrant, no?
Sounds like a system that makes a lot of sense for a country with a higher level of police trust. As you can probably infer from the call for prosecuting the police upthread, there’s a lot of Americans who don’t particularly trust the police and don’t think that accidents are the common case.
For what it’s worth, that specific scenario is admissible in the US as well under the plain view doctrine.
So make these things civil offenses. Lower burden of proof and no right to not testify. Make them personally pay for breaking the law.
Ya it's a bit of a meta-justice system, throwing out the case doesn't seem like an ideal outcome but it punishes the prosecutors for being sloppy. Sends the message, If you want to send someone to jail for 20 years, don't be sloppy.
I think it’s more precise to say that the temporary judge ruled that this can’t go to trial when the police admit they used Clearview services. Would a human viewing the footage been more convincing to a retired judge?
That will only work if they prosecute the detectives for falsifying information on a warrant application, which they won't. The really scary part is how many innocent people could have been jailed because of sloppiness that wasn't caught.
Don't let the perfect be the enemy of the good.
I don't think police really care what happens after the arrest most of the time, unless it was someone they feel wronged them. I could be wrong.
Point being, letting the guy get off, the police will just blame the lawyers and not themselves a lot of the time.
You always hear, "they got off on a technicality," which means the police were sloppy and didn't do their job the right (constitutional) way, but it infers someone did something wrong in the courtroom and not the police.
The case isn’t thrown out. The evidence obtained through an illegally obtained warrant is suppressed. They can still gather and use any other evidence to prove his guilt.