Blake Story was shot dead last year in Cleveland, Ohio, but the case against his alleged murderer hangs by a thread after it turned out cops used AI to justify the search warrant that led investigators to the gun. The software explicitly warns users that its output is not admissible in court.
The search turned up what police say is the murder weapon in the suspect's home. But a Cuyahoga County judge tossed that evidence after siding with defense attorneys who argued that the search warrant affidavit was misleading and relied on inadmissible evidence. If an appeals court upholds the judge's ruling to suppress the evidence, prosecutors acknowledge their case is likely lost. … "(The judge's decision) so weakened the state's case as to have destroyed any reasonable possibility of effectively prosecuting the charge," Cuyahoga County prosecutors wrote in court documents seeking an appeal.
"Lets just cheat and see if it flies" is classic gumshoe work—consider the fine American traditions of parallel construction, entrapment and plea threatening—but using AI to manoever judges into signing warrants might be too much for even the most cursed U.S. courtrooms.
The AI used was Clearview AI's face recognition software. Clearview has faced significant legal sanctions for its own conduct, settles like a Brazilian hillside, and its intrusive data collection practices are a frequent target of critics.
That AI report turned up eight photos, two of which were pictures of [suspect Qeyeon] Tolbert. Other photos included Instagram and YouTube pages now listed as private, a social media post of a man riding a bicycle behind a statue in Minneapolis and another YouTube video of several people tasting Buffalo Wild Wings.
Imagine being the judge looking at this. "The printout said he was our best hit and the gun proves it! Your honor! We motion for a bad court thingy."
