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.
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.
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.
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.
I expect the problems are similar in front of a judge.
> Evidence is merely a collection of facts, how it was gathered does not alter its factual nature.
That's obviously not true. The simplest counterexample is a witness report, where the credibility attached to the facts being reported will depend directly on the credibility of the witness. "The suspect verbally admitted he committed the crime while locked up in my car" will mean a lot less coming from a cop who lied to a judge while obtaining the arrest warrant.
That officer is not relating a verifiable fact, it's not evidence. Eye witness testimony is well known to be unreliable. As are confessions. Besides, you've move the goalposts from how to by whom.
It’s boring to argue about the definitions of words, but you’re using English and in the countries where English is primarily spoken, testimony is considered evidence.
> 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.
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.
> 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.
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.
Innocent until proven guilty eh?