Brief filed: 04/04/2025
Documents
State v. Tolbert
Ohio; Case No. CA-25-114748
Prior Decision
Appeal from Cuyahoga Cty. Ct. of Common Pleas, Case No. CR-24-689572-A
Argument(s)
Police obtained a warrant to search Qeyeon Tolbert’s home based on an alleged “identification” of the suspect, but the warrant affidavit concealed that this identification came from a facial recognition technology (FRT) search conducted by Clearview AI. FRT results are widely known to be unreliable and are not designed to yield definitive matches. Clearview’s own disclaimers specify that results are investigative leads only. The detective omitted this critical context and instead presented the FRT match as a positive identification, misleading the judge and violating the requirements of Franks v. Delaware. FRT returns multiple possible candidates and has well-documented racial and accuracy biases, particularly impacting Black individuals. Human review of FRT results is often compromised by automation bias and other cognitive errors. Once the falsehoods are excised, the affidavit fails to establish probable cause to search a specific apartment in a multi-unit building.
Author(s)
Stephanie Kessler, NACDL Sixth Circuit Vice-Chair, Kessler Defense LLC, Cincinnati, OH; Sidney W. Thaxter, NACDL Fourth Amendment Center, Washington, DC; Amy R. Gilbert and Freda J. Levenson, ACLU of Ohio Foundation, Cleveland, OH; Nathan Freed Wessler, ACLU Foundation, New York, NY.
