That’s Not Me

Summary

Podcast Summary: Criminal – “That’s Not Me”

Date: July 10, 2026
Host: Phoebe Judge
Episode Theme:
This episode explores the alarming consequences of misidentification when law enforcement uses facial recognition technology. Through personal accounts—most notably Portia Woodruff’s wrongful arrest—the episode probes both the fallibility and power of facial recognition in criminal justice, issues of algorithmic bias, lack of transparency, and rare cases where such technology has been used to prove innocence.

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Episode Overview

• Main theme: Misidentification and wrongful arrests stemming from the use of AI facial recognition technology by police, focusing on Portia Woodruff’s story and wider implications for justice, civil rights, and technology.
• Purpose: To reveal the risks, failures, and occasional benefits of facial recognition in law enforcement, exploring questions of reliability, accountability, and reform.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. Portia Woodruff’s Ordeal: An Innocent Woman, Wrongfully Arrested

• Arrest and Initial Shock ([01:13–04:08])

  • Portia Woodruff, eight months pregnant, is arrested at home for robbery and carjacking. Despite visibly not matching the suspect's description and having a very recent pregnancy that contradicted the timeline, police ignore her and her family's protests.
  • Quote:
    “I was handcuffed in front of my children. They walked me off the porch... in the middle of the street, and then they placed me in the police car.”
    — Portia Woodruff ([03:33])

• Interrogation and Evidence ([04:28–05:32])

  • Police quickly realize Portia does not match the suspect—she’s pregnant, has a distinctive tattoo, both missing from the suspect description—but detain and question her anyway.
  • The reason for her arrest: Police used a grainy surveillance still, ran it through facial recognition, and Portia was “matched” in the results.
  • Memorable Moment: Portia is told, “The database brings up photos and sometimes it'll bring up the wrong photo. And unfortunately, things like this happen.” ([05:19])

• The Aftermath: Bail, Trauma, and Family ([09:17–10:26])

  • Portia was held in custody until evening, arraigned, released on $100,000 bond, with her phone confiscated for investigation. She went straight to the hospital, fearing for her and her child’s health.
  • Quote: “Not things like this happen. Things like this are not supposed to happen.”
    — Portia Woodruff, explaining to her daughters ([09:51])

• Case Dropped, but No Full Accountability ([10:26–10:45])

  • Though the case is dropped after several court appearances, Portia’s life is upended. She’s believed to be the first US woman falsely accused due to facial recognition.
  • Quote:
    “Here it is. I'm waiting on the arrival of my son. But the biggest thing that I have going on is trying to see about a case getting dismissed... I have no idea about and shouldn't even be going to court for to begin with.”
    — Portia Woodruff ([10:26])

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2. Faulty Tech: How Facial Recognition Fails

• Background on Technology ([06:55–08:40])

  • Doug McMillan (Washington Post) explains that facial recognition searches often return hundreds of possible matches; human examiners narrow them down, but machine results can lead investigators astray.
  • Portia was selected out of 73 possible matches, and her outdated mugshot included in the photo lineup led the victim to a wrongful identification.

• Algorithmic Bias and Overreliance ([17:16–18:21], [24:38–26:27])

  • Studies (ACLU, NIST) have shown high rates of false identification, especially for people of color and women. Despite recent improvements, low-quality images and non-ideal conditions typical in law enforcement undermine reliability.
  • Doug McMillan describes “algorithmic bias”:
    “When you have a very fancy, expensive machine…[police] are likely to believe that that is the right person...” ([24:38])

• Transparency Issues ([26:27])

  • Police rarely disclose when facial recognition is used (“We used investigative techniques…”), stranding defendants (and their lawyers) in the dark. As a result, misidentification cases may be underreported.

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3. Real-World Consequences: More than Just Portia

• Robert Williams’ Case ([12:21–12:43])

  • Also in Detroit, Robert Williams, a Black man, is mistakenly arrested when police rely on flawed facial recognition software.
  • Quote (Testifying before Congress):
    “I hope you don't think all Black people look alike... So I guess the computer got it wrong.” — Robert Williams ([12:28])

• Other Examples ([11:04–11:28])

  • Quick news recap: men and women across the US imprisoned or charged solely due to AI matches— in Florida, North Dakota, and elsewhere.

• Defense Attorney’s First-Hand Battle ([21:12–25:56])

  • Public defender Kaitlin Rolle shares a story where her client was misidentified via facial recognition (despite an alibi—the birth of his son). Her client, unwilling to risk a trial while caring for a newborn, accepted a plea deal after six months in jail.
  • Quote:
    “The software can get better and better...But if what you're putting in is a grainy black and white surveillance photo…It doesn't matter how good the technology is…” — Kaitlin Rolle ([21:16])
  • Memorable moment:
    “We had a very good but not perfect alibi…So is it theoretically possible he was sitting there through the birth of his child and thought, you know what? I'm gonna run to TJ Maxx and steal some white socks? It's possible, but it's deeply, deeply unlikely.” — Kaitlin Rolle ([23:49])

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4. Law Enforcement’s Perspective and Accountability

• Overconfidence in Technology ([25:51], [26:27])

  • Police officers often skip traditional investigative steps after a facial recognition “hit,” trusting the technology too much.
  • Lineup procedures and human confirmation are not the safeguards they’re assumed to be, especially when the original images are poor.

• Official Response ([38:00])

  • Detroit Police Chief defined Portia’s case as “human error,” not a technology flaw.
    “He did say it was lazy police work. He was absolutely right.” — Portia Woodruff ([38:18])

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5. Facial Recognition for Good? Clearing the Innocent

• A Rare Positive Use Case ([29:59–36:37])
  • Defense attorney Christopher O’Brien used facial recognition (Clearview AI) to find an eyewitness who could exonerate his client, Andrew Conlon, facing vehicular homicide charges. Despite this success, O’Brien cautions against letting tech erase human judgment.
  • Quote:
    “We shouldn’t just abdicate our human sense of morality…I'm very against that.” — Christopher O’Brien ([36:37])

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Notable Quotes and Memorable Moments

• On Trauma:

  • “My youngest is like, mom, they're supposed to help us…You didn't do anything wrong. Why did they take you?” — Portia Woodruff ([09:51])

• On Bias:

  • “I hope you don’t think all Black people look alike.” — Robert Williams ([12:28])

• On the Technology’s Limits:

  • “In very perfect conditions…facial recognition is very good...But that's not how police are using these tools in the wild.” — Doug McMillan ([20:48])

• On Lack of Checks:

  • “Most of the time, defendants have no idea if they were identified using this machine.” — Doug McMillan ([26:27])

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Timed Highlights

• Portia’s arrest and disbelief: [01:13–04:28]
• Facial recognition process explained: [06:55–08:40]
• Algorithmic bias exposed: [17:16–20:48]
• Defense misuse and wrongful plea: [21:12–26:06]
• Rare exoneration using technology: [29:59–36:37]
• Accountability and apology: [38:00–38:33]

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Concluding Reflections

• Portia Woodruff reflects that if not for being visibly pregnant, she might have been jailed or still fighting her case:
  “My pregnancy was the only thing that really saved me.” ([36:55])
• She expresses frustration that being released is considered “good enough” by authorities—a situation she deems unacceptable ([37:27]).
• The episode closes with a call for critical scrutiny and caution in using powerful, flawed, and often opaque technologies like facial recognition, especially in the high-stakes arena of criminal justice.

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Summary Table of Key Characters

| Name | Role/Contribution | Timestamp | |-----------------------|-----------------------------------------------------|------------------| | Portia Woodruff | Primary subject, wrongfully arrested | 01:13–38:33 | | Phoebe Judge | Host/narrator, guides story and interviews | Throughout | | Doug McMillan | Reporter/Expert, explains technology & pitfalls | 06:55–26:27 | | Robert Williams | Former misidentified suspect, testifies to Congress | 12:21–12:43 | | Kaitlin Rolle | Public defender, shares client’s misidentification | 21:12–26:06 | | Christopher O’Brien | Defense attorney, found exonerating witness via AI | 29:59–36:37 |

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Tone & Language

• The episode maintains Criminal’s signature storytelling style: calm, empathetic, inquisitive, and direct, amplifying the human cost behind technological errors and bureaucratic oversights.
• Guests and host share stories and insights thoughtfully, encouraging reflection about the intersection of justice and emerging technology.

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Recommended for

Listeners interested in criminal justice reform, ethics of technology, civil rights, law enforcement practices, and real-world impacts of AI.

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For further resources, visit thisiscriminal.com.

Transcript

[Phoebe Judge]

Support for Criminal comes from Squarespace. If you're a business owner, you know that it matters how you present your business online. Squarespace has the tools you need to customize your website and advertise all the kinds of services you provide. Plus, you can choose the colors and fonts you like. Go to squarespace.com criminal for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code CRIMINAL to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Support for criminal comes from BetterHelp. Conversations around mental health have evolved a lot over the years, but it can still feel difficult to seek help. BetterHelp's 2026 State of Stigma report surveyed 2,000Americans and revealed that 85% of Americans believe getting support is wise, yet 74% say society discourages people from doing so. You don't have to let stigma stand in the way of support. You can start therapy with better help. You can sign up and get 10% [e-mail] criminal that's betterhelp.com criminal on the morning of February 16, 2023, Portia Woodruff was getting her two daughters ready for school.

[Portia Woodruff]

I was brushing my daughter's hair up, and I heard a loud bang at the door. Um, I was upstairs when I heard it, so I went downstairs myself and my youngest daughter went downstairs. And when I went to the door and kind of peeked out, it was the officer standing at the door, a

[Phoebe Judge]

police officer from the Detroit Police Department.

[Portia Woodruff]

She said, are you Portia Woodruff? I said, yes. Um. She said, well, I have a warrant for your arrest. And I'm. I was like, okay, no, you have to be mistaken. What do you mean you have a warrant for my arrest? She said, no, we have a warrant for your arrest. Um, I would need you to step outside. You can go with us. And I'm like, whoa, no. What's going on?

[Phoebe Judge]

The officer told Portia that she was being arrested for robbery and carjacking.

[Portia Woodruff]

I'm like, can you tell me when this happened? She's like, oh, well, it happened last year.

[Phoebe Judge]

In addition to the officer at her door, Portia saw that there were five other police officers outside her house, in her driveway, and on the street. Portia told her daughter to go and wake up her fiance. She also called her mother.

[Portia Woodruff]

I said, mom, they're here. They say they have a warrant for my arrest. I don't know what's going on.

[Phoebe Judge]

Portia's mother told her she should look at the warrant. When Portia read it, she noticed that the robbery and Carjacking she was being accused of hadn't happened the year before. It had happened just a few weeks earlier. And Portia was about to have a baby. And clearly, you're eight months pregnant. You're visibly pregnant.

[Portia Woodruff]

Yes, yes. We were kind of going back and forth, and they weren't listening to me. My mom's like, hey, you might want to look at the paperwork. There's no way. And then once my child's father came down, like, hey, what are you guys. What are you guys talking about? What's going on? They were disregarding everything everyone said. So of course my children were there. My youngest started crying. You know, my oldest daughter, she's looking at me, you know. You know, but trying to calm her sister down at the same time. And it's like, okay, what's going on? My mom's pregnant, and the police are trying to take her away. I was frightened, too, but I'm to the point, like, I'm helpless because what can I do? Nothing. I'm saying that it's not. They're not taking it in.

[Phoebe Judge]

Basically, Porsha agreed to go with the officers.

[Portia Woodruff]

I was handcuffed in front of my children. They walked me off the porch. They handcuffed me in front of the. Like, in the middle of the street, and then they placed me in the police car.

[Phoebe Judge]

She was driven to the Detroit Detention center and put into a holding cell.

[Portia Woodruff]

There are guards speaking to me like, hey, you're pregnant. What are you doing here? I'm like, hey, I don't know. I have no clue. I have no idea. I didn't even speak to a detective until they arrested me at maybe around 7 or 8. I didn't speak to a detective till maybe 12 1.

[Phoebe Judge]

Police later admitted they knew quickly after Portia's arrival at the police station that she couldn't have been the person they were looking for because of her pregnancy and also because of a large tattoo of a rose on Portia's arm, which didn't match the suspect's description. They questioned her anyway.

[Portia Woodruff]

She asked me about a tattoo. She asked me about her location. She asked me about the color of a vehicle. She asked me what. Where was I at the day that the incident happened, how many months I was, if I knew a victim and another suspect. If I frequently visit a certain gas station. She asked me a series of questions. And then after she asked, well, do you have any questions for me? And I'm like, of course. Why am I here?

[Phoebe Judge]

And what did she say?

[Portia Woodruff]

Her response was, oh, well, the victim chose a Photo of you that was picked up from a video at the gas station.

[Phoebe Judge]

Police had run a picture of a female suspect taken from a surveillance video through their AI powered facial recognition system.

[Portia Woodruff]

She said the database brings up photos and sometimes it'll bring up the wrong photo. And unfortunately, things like this happen. And then I'm like, wow, are you serious?

[Phoebe Judge]

I'm Phoebe Judge. This is criminal. A little more than two weeks earlier, on the evening of January 29, 2023, a man named Lawrence Walker called 91 1. He told the dispatcher that he'd been carjacked at gunpoint. He said two people, a man and a woman, were involved. His phone and his wallet were in his car when it was stolen. Lawrence Walker had spent some time with the woman who was involved in the carjacking. Although he didn't know her well, he had picked her up earlier that day and said they had drank together and he thought she might have drugged him. He described her as a black female with brown and blonde long hair and a slim build. He said her name was Trinidad. Two days after reporting the carjacking, Lawrence Walker told the police that his cell phone had been dropped off at a gas station. An officer went to the gas station and watched surveillance footage and saw that the woman dropping off the phone matched the description of the woman involved in the carjacking. The police officer took a screenshot of the woman in the gas station surveillance video. In the image, she's wearing a hat that covers her forehead and eyebrows.

[Doug McMillan]

They ran this image through their facial recognition system.

[Phoebe Judge]

Doug McMillan is a reporter for the Washington Post.

[Doug McMillan]

It's actually a system that's controlled by the state of Michigan, and they send a still image to an examiner in a lab who runs us through an AI powered software system. The system generally comes back with not one result or not a few results. They generally come back with hundreds of results. And that examiner goes through and selects who they think might be the best match or the best fit for that potential suspect.

[Phoebe Judge]

In this case, the software identified 73 photos in the system as potential matches. An examiner narrowed it down further to just one potential match. Portia Woodruff.

[Doug McMillan]

That examiner sent that potential match to the Detroit police investigator with the disclaimer, like they always do, that this is just a possible lead and not this is not definitely the suspect, that it's just a potential match and that that police person needs to go and take additional investigative steps to. To make sure it is the right person before making an arrest.

[Phoebe Judge]

Police created a photo lineup for Lawrence Walker to look at. It included Porsche's mugshot, which had been taken eight years earlier. When Lawrence Walker saw the photo lineup, he picked out Porsche's picture. The officer conducting the investigation asked him, are you sure this is the person? Lawrence Walker said, yes, but the problem

[Doug McMillan]

with that is that this facial recognition software is so good at finding somebody who looks like the perpetrator. That's what this machine is built to do, that if it finds somebody who looks like the perpetrator and isn't the perpetrator, that potential suspect is going to fool witnesses, it's going to fool police investigators, and it could even fool, you know, a judge and jury ultimately, because what they've come back with is a lookalike person and not the real suspect.

[Phoebe Judge]

Portia Woodruff stayed in custody until that evening. She was arraigned and released on a hundred thousand dollar bond. The police also kept her cell phone. Portia says they told her they wanted to check her phone records to confirm that, that she wasn't at the crime scene. Portia went straight from the jail to the emergency room. She said she had been having contractions. She got checked out, got IV fluids and went home in the middle of the night. When you got home was the conversation that you had with your kids.

[Portia Woodruff]

Like, I talked to them a long while about just me trying to explain to them like, you know, not things like this happen, things like this are not supposed to happen and still try to have them have some type of trust for, you know, police officers, because my youngest is like, mom, they're supposed to help us. You know, we're supposed to call them when we're in trouble. If something bad is happening, you didn't do anything bad, you didn't do anything wrong. Why did they take you?

[Phoebe Judge]

Over the next few weeks, Porsha had multiple court hearings before the case was eventually dropped.

[Portia Woodruff]

Here it is. I'm waiting on the arrival of my son. But the biggest thing that I have going on is trying to see about a case getting dismissed that I have no idea about and shouldn't even be going to court for to begin with.

[Phoebe Judge]

Porsha Woodruff was the first woman in the US Known to be wrongfully accused of a crime because of a facial recognition search. The ACLU says more than a dozen people in the US have had this happen to them in recent years. And stories keep surfacing.

[Christopher O'Brien]

A Florida man says he was wrongfully arrested after local police used AI facial recognition technology.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

He spent 17 months in jail for a crime that an artificial intelligence program said he committed. Police in Fargo, North Dakota used an AI facial recognition hit to tie her to to a bank fraud case, despite her saying she'd never been to the state.

[Phoebe Judge]

The very first documented case of this kind of mistaken Identity happened in 2020. Also in Detroit. A man named Robert Williams was at work at an automotive supply company when he got a call from the Detroit police. They told him to come to the station to turn himself in. He thought it was a joke. When he got home later, a police car pulled into his driveway behind him. He was taken away in handcuffs. Police wouldn't tell him or his family why he was under arrest. He spent the night in jail. A cellmate told him he had overheard officers saying he was being accused of stealing watches. The next day, detectives showed him a still image showing a man dressed in black wearing a red hat standing in front of a watch display.

[Robert Williams]

He says, oh, that's not you. I said, no, that's not me.

[Phoebe Judge]

This is Robert Williams testifying in front of Congress.

[Robert Williams]

He turns over another piece of paper. He says, so I guess that's not you either. I held that piece of paper up to my face and said, I hope you don't think all black people look alike. He turned over another paper and said, so I guess the computer got it wrong.

[Phoebe Judge]

Robert Williams was eventually released and the case against him was dropped. He later wrote about his arrest, I felt like I was in a bad movie. I couldn't leave. We'll be right back to listen without ads Join Criminal plus. Thanks to Squarespace for their support Making a website can be intimidating, especially because it's often the first thing people see about your business. If you want to build a website that makes a great first impression on people, you don't need years of coding experience. You just need Squarespace. It's the all in one website platform made to help you stand out online. Squarespace has the tools you need to make your website look exactly how you want it to look, sell your services, and get paid. No matter what business you're in. You can choose from a library of templates designed by professionals, or if you don't want to scroll through all the template options. Squarespace's blueprint AI can build a website for you in just a couple of minutes based on a few prompts. It'll pull from different templates. To create the website you need, go to squarespace.com criminal for a free trial. When you're ready to launch, use the offer code criminal to save 10% off your first purchase of a website or domain. Support for Criminal comes from Ritual. A daily multivitamin is a great way to make sure you're still getting all the right nutrients on long summer days. I take Rituals Essential for Women twice a day. It's part of my daily routine, but during the summer months it can be hard to stick to our usual routines. I was traveling recently and didn't get a chance to take my multivitamin with breakfast, but luckily you can take Ritual's multivitamin with or without food. It was designed to be gentle on the stomach, which makes it easy to fit into a busy schedule. Ritual's Essential for Women 18 multivitamin contains nine key nutrients in two delayed release capsules per day. And while some multivitamins can have kind of a weird smell, Ritual bottles are infused with a minty essence, so taking your vitamins is actually enjoyable. Instead of striving for perfect health, aim for supporting foundational health. Save 25% off your first month at ritual.com criminal that's ritual.com criminal for 25% off your first month. In the 1960s, a computer scientist named Woody Bledsoe started working on a system of measurements that could help computers recognize faces in photos. According to a profile in Wired magazine, Woody Bledsoe had his teenage son and a friend go through photos of about 50 people, measuring how long their ears were or the width of their mouth. That data was then entered into a computer to see if the computer could match the information to a face in a set of photographs. Their initial goal was to teach a computer to recognize ten faces. It was rumored that Woody Bledsoe's research was funded by the CIA. He eventually taught a computer to successfully recognize hundreds of white male faces, and in the 1980s, he used his research when he was hired as an expert witness in a criminal trial. His testimony, which showed that an image taken from a surveillance video did not match the defendant on trial because their noses were different sizes, led to the defendant being acquitted of several crimes. Today, Woody Bledsoe is considered one of the founders of artificial intelligence. When did police start to use this technology?

[Doug McMillan]

It's not completely new. This has been used in some form by some police for for more than two decades. In Florida, there's a sheriff called the Pinellas County Sheriff's Office that has been using facial recognition in some form for more than two decades. But the technology was pretty bad and it was very kind of unreliable.

[Phoebe Judge]

In 2018, the ACLU ran a test using a facial recognition software made by Amazon called Recognition. They uploaded a photo of every member of the US House and Senate and compared them with 25,000 publicly available arrest photos. The software incorrectly matched 28 members of Congress with arrest photos. Almost 40% of those incorrect matches were people of color. A year later, the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or nist, looked at a number of different facial recognition programs and found higher rates of false identifications for Asian, African American and Native American people versus white people. It also had a harder time correctly identifying women than men. But a 2025 study by NIST found that the error rate has fallen dramatically in recent years.

[Doug McMillan]

You really started to kind of get these magical moments where you can really see demos of this technology working incredibly well. And all you need to do is put in a picture. You can even test on yourself. You can put in a picture of yourself and it'll magically grab images from all over the Internet that maybe you didn't even know existed.

[Phoebe Judge]

Okay, I'm recording.

[Portia Woodruff]

All right.

[Phoebe Judge]

So, okay, I'm uploading a picture of me, the straight on headshot. I am wearing makeup. I'm gonna accept that I'm over 18 and I'm gonna start searching. It's saying, it's searching for. Okay, so what has come up here

[Christopher O'Brien]

is

[Phoebe Judge]

a lot of pictures of me. These are pictures a lot of. I've never seen some of these pictures before. So I'm seeing here probably 50 pictures of me from all different types of photo shoots. Pictures that people have taken of me in a professional setting, headshots, but then also pictures that I don't know where of me on stage. I'd say there's probably 50 pictures of me up here.

[Doug McMillan]

It does have this very incredible, almost uncanny ability to scour the Internet or scour a database of images to find somebody who looks like you or somebody who is you. And I think police in a time when they're very strapped for resources, this is a very promising and alluring tool for helping them solve some of the most difficult crimes. Some of the most difficult crimes you can think of are ones where the only witness was a video camera. The problem is we don't actually know how effective it is.

[Phoebe Judge]

When the National Institute of Standards and Technology, or nist test facial recognition programs, it uses two high quality images of front facing people. The Federation of American Scientists says these are relatively ideal conditions and that in the real world, error rates might be

[Doug McMillan]

much higher in very perfect conditions. When you essentially have a yearbook photo of somebody with perfect lighting who's perfectly framed with their face facing forward, thinking facial recognition is very good at identifying the right person in that setting. But that's not how police are using

[Kaitlin Rolle]

these Tools in the wild. The photos that are often getting used in a law enforcement context are really low quality.

[Phoebe Judge]

Kaitlin Rolle works as a public defender.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

The software can get better and better and better. It could get exponentially better. But if what you're putting in is a grainy black and white surveillance photo taken from overhead where someone's looking to the side and wearing a beanie, it doesn't matter how good the technology is, because you're the software. Just can't do a good job comparing it.

[Phoebe Judge]

Eight years ago, Caitlyn was working in the Bronx and was assigned a client who had been charged with robbery in the first degree. The robbery had happened at a TJ Maxx. Caitlyn says surveillance video showed someone stealing some socks. And then when a security guard approached them, the person waved a box cutter at them and left. A few months later, Caitlyn's client was picked up by the police.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

I just couldn't figure out why they connected him to this robbery. He didn't make any statement saying he had done this. There was nobody found the socks. He didn't leave something that belonged to him. It was just an arrest months later. So I called the prosecutor and said, why do you think my guy did this? And he said, you're never going to believe this, Caitlyn. They used facial recognition.

[Phoebe Judge]

It was the first time that Caitlyn had heard about someone being identified this way. She started digging into the case to figure out what had happened.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

So the police went to that TJ Maxx and they pulled surveillance video. And when they pulled surveillance video, they talked to the loss prevention officer. And what they told him was, we have this fancy new facial recognition software. We're gonna run this surveillance through.

[Phoebe Judge]

The NYPD then ran a still image from the video through the software. Caitlin says it was a black and white image taken from above. The person was wearing a hat. Caitlyn's client came up as one of the possible matches.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

The police took a screen grab of just my client's mugshot and they text messaged it to the loss prevention officer. And what they said was, is this the person who robbed you?

[Phoebe Judge]

The security guard texted back, yes, this was the person who robbed the store.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

What was particularly concerning and interesting in this case is that we had a very good but not perfect alibi for where he was that day.

[Phoebe Judge]

What was it?

[Kaitlin Rolle]

So his baby boy was born that day. We had photos of him in the hospital. We had the birth certificate that he was on. We showed all of that to the prosecution. The problem is that the birth time was a couple hours different than the time that the socks were stolen. So is it theoretically possible he was sitting there through the birth of his child and thought, you know what? I'm gonna run to TJ Maxx and steal some white socks? It's possible, but it's deeply, deeply unlikely. And we were in this tricky spot where both the police and the prosecution, who do not understand this technology, were sort of saying, well, yeah, sure, you've got that. But, you know, in their minds, like, facial recognition couldn't have got it wrong.

[Doug McMillan]

There's a phenomenon that researchers talk about that's called algorithmic bias. That when you have a very fancy, expensive machine and you put it in front of these police officers and it gives them a result, they are likely to believe that that is the right person, that the computer must be telling me the right person, because it's a very fancy machine and it's a very expensive machine, and that is going to be probably be the suspect that we're looking for. And so when police get that result, they do seem to go out of their way to try to find that person guilty. And they do tend sometimes forget that to take other investigative steps that you normally would like interviewing witnesses, going to check financial records and bank accounts, going to do basic police work that all police have been trained to do. Once they get this AI result, some of this seems to go out the door, and they sometimes get blinders on where they're just kind of focusing on, how do we get this person in custody, how do we get this person prosecuted?

[Phoebe Judge]

Caitlin says she thinks her client would have had a strong case at trial,

[Kaitlin Rolle]

but he had a new baby, and he could have sat in jail for a very long time waiting for that trial. So ultimately he took the plea.

[Phoebe Judge]

How long was he in jail for?

[Kaitlin Rolle]

About six months.

[Phoebe Judge]

Caitlin Rolle says since this case, she's worked on other cases with where facial recognition technology has been used by police, typically using surveillance photos. But she suspects it's being used more often than she and other defense attorneys know about.

[Doug McMillan]

Police generally do not disclose when they're using this technology. In most places in the country, police are not required to say that they've used facial recognition in this way to identify a suspect. I went through hundreds of police reports from departments all over the country where they were using these tools. We knew from internal logs that they were using this technology. But when we read the police reports, nine times out of 10, they were not anywhere explicitly saying facial recognition technology. At most, they were usually saying, we used investigative techniques to identify this person. So therefore most, most of the time, the defendants have no idea if they were identified using this machine. So ultimately, there could be people who were taken to trial, there could be people who were convicted, there could be even people who accepted plea deals, people who are behind bars right now who are misidentified by facial recognition and we don't even know about it. So maybe there are dozens or maybe there are even hundreds more of people who are wrongly identified this way.

[Phoebe Judge]

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[Christopher O'Brien]

My understanding is that we were the first defense side to use AI and facial recognition to help exonerate someone.

[Phoebe Judge]

Christopher O' Brien is a criminal defense attorney based in Fort Myers, Florida. In 2019, he took on a client named Andrew Conlon. Andrew had been in a high speed car accident with his friend Colton Hassett. Their car was going about 100 miles an hour when it went out of control, hitting lampposts and trees.

[Christopher O'Brien]

The car, you know, spun violently and flung Colton out the window and he died in some bushes.

[Phoebe Judge]

The car then caught on fire. Andrew was trapped inside. A bystander helped get him out through the driver's side of the car and later talked with police. He told them that Andrew had been the passenger in the car.

[Portia Woodruff]

Did anybody see what happened?

[Phoebe Judge]

Any of you guys see what happened? The driver took off, but he got

[Portia Woodruff]

ejected from one of the windows.

[Doug McMillan]

Wait, that's not the driver?

[Phoebe Judge]

No, he was a passenger, but the police didn't ask for the bystander's name or contact information.

[Christopher O'Brien]

Never asked him his name, a phone number. Never asked him. Hey, buddy, can you stick around a little? I'd like to talk to you some more. Seems like, you know, you're an important witness.

[Phoebe Judge]

Police kept talking with other people at the scene who said they thought Andrew had been seated in the driver's seat. At one point, police also thought that Andrew said he had been the driver. He said they misheard him. Andrew maintained that he had been the passenger, not the driver. But more than two years later, he was charged with vehicular homicide.

[Christopher O'Brien]

It's a second degree felony, which is punishable by up to 15 years of prison.

[Phoebe Judge]

When Christopher O' Brien saw that there was body camera footage of someone saying his client had not been driving, he wanted to find that person.

[Christopher O'Brien]

We didn't know who it was, but he was in an orange cut off shirt that said Event Security. It was a bright orange shirt. So, I mean, he's pretty, you know, he stood out.

[Phoebe Judge]

They made flyers and put them around the area and ran a social media campaign. No one turned up. They worked on the case for more than two years. Christopher o' Brien was working with another defense lawyer named Patrick Bailey, who wondered if they could use facial recognition technology to find the bystander. They tried using free software, but it wasn't helpful. Instead, they wanted to use something called Clearview AI. Clearview AI is a facial recognition company that works primarily with government agencies like law enforcement and the military. It works by scraping billions of images off every corner of The Internet, including social media platforms. It's controversial and has faced privacy lawsuits across the globe. Patrick Bailey wrote to the CEO and asked for a license to use the software. He said, quote, I am aware that your company only provides facial recognition software to law enforcement agencies. What happens if those same agencies refuse to use Clearview AI's important and powerful software to identify an eyewitness that could clear an innocent person.

[Christopher O'Brien]

This stuff is available to cops, the state attorney's office, and these cops could have done that. They could have run his face and found him if they wanted. But they had plenty witnesses who said Mr. Conlin climbed out the driver's door, and they were happy with that.

[Phoebe Judge]

The CEO of Clearview AI said he would let them use the software.

[Christopher O'Brien]

So we fed it in with the still picture that we had been disseminating around town and on Facebook and so on. We put that picture in, and Clearview AI popped up like, 30 pictures of the guy within, like, seconds. I mean, it was insane how quickly it popped up. These pictures of him, one of which was him in the orange event security shirt, the exact same one he was wearing on the night. I was like, that's him. I mean, that's the guy.

[Phoebe Judge]

One of the photos showed the man dancing at a club in Tampa. They later learned that his name is Vincent. The photo is clear. You can see which club and who he was dancing with.

[Christopher O'Brien]

So he called up the club, and they said that they didn't know Vincent, but they knew the other guy. And so we got in touch with that guy, the friend, and then apparently that friend got in touch with Vincent, because one morning we were here at the office, and the phone rang, and it was, hey, I hear you guys are looking for me. We were like, no, no way. It was like hitting the lottery, finding this guy.

[Phoebe Judge]

Vincent had moved away to St. Augustine, so he hadn't seen any of the social media posts or flyers. He agreed to give a deposition about the accident.

[Christopher O'Brien]

One of the questions the state asked Vincent, he's really, you know, why do you. Now they're asking, well, why do you think he's the passenger? And he's like, well, I went up to the car, looked in the driver's door, and he was in the passenger seat. His feet were down in the. Well, like, where the passenger's feet go. And I tried to pull him out, and he wouldn't come. And I had to finagle. Those were his words. I had to finagle him out. So once they heard that, and they were. The prosecutor looked at me. He's like, how are we going to argue with that?

[Phoebe Judge]

The state dropped the charges against Andrew Conlon. The national association of Criminal Defense Lawyers calls facial recognition technology unregulated, untested, and flawed and wrote that this case, quote, does not override the larger issues that facial recognition introduces into the criminal legal system. Clearview AI has Andrew Conlon's story up on their website. One supervising attorney who works at Legal Aid called it a PR stunt. Christopher o' Brien says he would use facial recognition technology again if it became available to defense lawyers. But he also thinks it should be used with caution by everyone.

[Christopher O'Brien]

We shouldn't just abdicate our human sense of morality and just basically good common sense that we have and just abdicate it off to some tech and go, well, the tech says X, so X is the answer. I'm very against that.

[Portia Woodruff]

My pregnancy was the only thing that really saved me. I would have been still fighting the case as we speak now, probably, or already in jail doing signs for something I didn't do.

[Phoebe Judge]

Portia Woodruff.

[Portia Woodruff]

I felt like if the detective had, hey, let me go and visit her and knock on her door and talk to her and ask her these questions that could have been avoided. It was just complete carelessness all the way through.

[Phoebe Judge]

What do you hope happens going forward?

[Portia Woodruff]

I hope that with this type of case, you know, sometimes I feel like they feel like, okay, well, they're out, they're not locked up, so that's good enough for them. And honestly, that's how I felt, like, okay, well, at least you're not locked up. And it's like, okay, I shouldn't have been thought about being locked up. I'm not doing anything wrong for me to be in prison or in jail for anything. So for that to happen, and then you throw it up like, oh, well, things like this happen to who? Why?

[Phoebe Judge]

Six months after Portia Woodruff's arrest, the Detroit chief of police said that it was, quote, human error that led to Portia's arrest, not the facial recognition system. He said he apologized to Portia Woodruff and her family.

[Portia Woodruff]

He did say it was lazy police work. He was absolutely right.

[Phoebe Judge]

Criminal is created by Lauren Spore and me. Nadia Wilson is our senior producer. Katie Bishop is our supervising producer. Our producers are Susanna Roberson, Jackie Sajiko, Lily Clark, and Lena Sillison. This episode was fact checked by Katie Cederborg. Our show is mixed and engineered by Veronica Simonetti. Julian Alexander makes original illustrations for each episode of Criminal, and you can see [e-mail] and you can sign up for our [e-mail] Newsletter we hope you'll consider supporting our work by joining our membership program, Criminal. Plus, you can listen to Criminal, this is Love and Phoebe Reads a Mystery without any ads. Plus you'll get bonus episodes. These are special episodes with me and Criminal co creator Lauren Spohr talking about everything from how we make our episodes to the crime stories that caught our attention that week, to things we've been enjoying lately. To learn more, go to patreon.com criminal we're on Facebook hisiscriminal and Instagram and TikTok criminalpodcast. We're also on [e-mail] criminalpodcast Criminal is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network. Discover more great [e-mail] I'm Phoebe Judge. This is Criminal.

[Kaitlin Rolle]

It.