CLEVELAND, Ohio — The question of whether the Ju judge has ever heard of the brutal death of Break Story could come down to this. Did Cleveland Police use unacceptable evidence and mislead the judge when seeking a search warrant?
The Court of Appeals is expected to determine the answer in the coming months. The ruling could create a precedent for how police use facial recognition technology.
On Friday, the lawyers discussed in front of the 8th Ohio District Court of Appeals in front of Irene T. Gallagher, Emmanuela D. Groves and Dina R. Calabrese.
The incident includes the 2024 Break Story murder of Cleveland, a gentle, spoken alumnus of the Garrett Morgan School of Engineering and Innovation, who dreamed of becoming a veterinarian.
In the investigation, Cleveland police used facial recognition from artificial intelligence software to identify suspect Qeyeon Tolbert. The judge sided with Tolbert's lawyer, who claimed that identification was not recognized in court and that the detective misunderstood legal scholars about the use of AI.
“This is a new technology and it's been hidden in affidavits, so we're accepting it blindly,” Fallon told the District 8 panel. “That's why this is kind of an important case. I know there are a lot of issues here… but I think there was a lot of misleading information.”
Cuyahoga County prosecutor Owen Knapp argued that police have supported the report through solid detective work, and that there are possible causes for searching Tolbert's home without the help of facial recognition.
“It was part of the puzzle,” Knap said of artificial intelligence.
The case has resulted in Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost, the American Civil Liberties Union and the National Association of Criminal Defense Bars submitting briefs from Court friends on the case. The three are not parties to the case, but they want to know their concerns on the appeal panel.
investigation
This case stems from the murder of the 2024 Valentine's Day story. The story was walking home along East 152nd Street as a man approached him from behind and robbed him and shot him twice. Story walks the rest of his way home and is found dead in his bathtub the next day.
Cleveland police found surveillance video showing a murderer walking in front of the story temporarily stopping by in Tolbert's driveway and placing himself behind the story.
After the killer shot story, he ran towards Tolbert's house, and police say he returned to collect shell casings while wearing different clothes before returning to the direction of Tolbert's house.
Police did not see the murderer enter Tolbert's house in particular. Surveillance video wasn't close enough to see the face of the murderer in the story.
Six days after the murder, police saw surveillance cameras indicating Tolbert was leaving his apartment on East 152nd Street before heading to a nearby convenience store. Police accessed security cameras at convenience stores and sent photos of Tolbert to the Regional Fusion Center in northeast Ohio.
Fusion Center, an intelligence reporting unit for interagency law enforcement, took photos of Tolbert Shopping through an artificial intelligence-powered facial recognition program called ClearView AI.
ClearView identified Tolbert alongside several others as a match for people who shop at convenience stores. Police who wagered on Tolbert's apartment said they were caught in surveillance video but walked, looking too far from the killer, indistinguishable.
When detectives presented this evidence to Kiiahoga County Common Plea Judge Joan Sinenberg for a search warrant for Tolbert's apartment, he made no mention of the use of facial recognition technology in identifying Tolbert, the defense attorney said.
He also did not state that the technology is in charge of the disclaimer and explicitly excludes it from being used in court proceedings.
When police searched Tolbert's apartment, they said they found, among other evidence, a Taurus G3 handgun that they believed was a murder weapon. Tolbert, a convicted felon, is prohibited from owning a firearm.
County prosecutors emphasize that layered investigations rely on more than AI use.
Tolbert's lawyers Daniel Tilfagne and Brian Fallon argued that the search warrant was based on misleading affidavits from detectives and relied on unacceptable evidence. Visiting Judge Richard McNagle, a jurist who primarily sided Tolbert's case, agreed to rule out the outcome of a search warrant from the trial.
In fact, McNagle's ruling means that prosecutors must try Tolbert for murder without using suspected murder weapons or other important evidence at trial.
The prosecutor's office has admitted that the case is destined without evidence and has filed a lawsuit against the 8th District for McNagle's ruling.
The judges' questions said Friday that they focused on facial recognition and the use of disclaimers at the bottom of the AI report and should not be used in court filings.
However, Calabrese, one of the appeal judges, questioned whether the disclaimer meant that the court could not consider the findings of the AI report.
“There is absolutely no case law I found regarding this disclaimer. This disclaimer is between the police station and the fusion centre,” said Calabrese.
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