Woodruff v. Oliver
What's at Stake
On December 5, 2024, the ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan filed an amicus brief in Woodruff v. Oliver, a wrongful arrest lawsuit in the United States District Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, arguing that the Detroit Police Department’s (DPD) reliance on flawed facial recognition technology (FRT) impermissibly tainted the investigation and failed to establish probable cause for the plaintiff’s arrest.
Summary
In 2023, DPD officers wrongfully arrested plaintiff Porcha Woodruff on the basis of a faulty facial recognition match and subsequent witness identification made from a photo lineup array.
In the amicus brief filed by the ACLU and the ACLU of Michigan before the District Court, we argue that neither an FRT result, nor an eyewitness identification from a photo array based on an FRT result, can supply probable cause for an arrest. FRT results are fundamentally unreliable and display higher rates of false matches for people of color, women, and young adults. Moreover, because FRT systems are designed to find similar-looking faces, even when the technology gets it wrong, the result is likely to look similar to the suspect. A photo lineup array containing an innocent false-match “döppelganger” generated by FRT surrounded by filler photos that necessarily look less like the suspect is impermissibly suggestive and can lead the witness to wrongly select the innocent person chosen by FRT. That is what happened in Ms. Woodruff’s case.
The amicus brief urges the court to provide clarity to the public and the police about how FRT taints investigations and why witness identification procedures based only on FRT results are fundamentally unreliable.
Legal Documents
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Brief of Amici Curiae American Civil Liberties Union and American Civil Liberties Union of Michigan
Court: District Court (E.D. Mich.)
Affiliate: Michigan