Evidence Commons^™

Computationally Assessing Suspicion, Wesley M. Oliver, Morgan A. Gray, Jaromir Savelka, Kevin D. Ashley

University of Cincinnati Law Review

Law enforcement officers performing drug interdiction on interstate highways have to decide nearly every day whether there is reasonable suspicion to detain motorists until a trained dog can sniff for the presence of drugs. The officers’ assessments are often wrong, however, and lead to unnecessary detentions of innocent persons and the suppression of drugs found on guilty ones. We propose a computational method of evaluating suspicion in these encounters and offer experimental results from early efforts demonstrating its feasibility. With the assistance of large language and predictive machine learning models, it appears that judges, advocates, and even police officers could …

The Computer Got It Wrong: Facial Recognition Technology And Establishing Probable Cause To Arrest, T.J. Benedict

Washington and Lee Law Review

Facial recognition technology (FRT) is a popular tool among police, who use it to identify suspects using photographs or still-images from videos. The technology is far from perfect. Recent studies highlight that many FRT systems are less effective at identifying people of color, women, older people, and children. These race, gender, and age biases arise because FRT is often “trained” using non-diverse faces. As a result, police have wrongfully arrested Black men based on mistaken FRT identifications. This Note explores the intersection of facial recognition technology and probable cause to arrest.

Courts rarely, if ever, examine FRT’s role in establishing …

No Longer Innocent Until Proven Guilty: How Ohio Violates The Fourth Amendment Through Familial Dna Searches Of Felony Arrestees, Jordan Mason

Cleveland State Law Review

In 2013, the United States Supreme Court legalized DNA collection of all felony arrestees upon arrest through its decision in Maryland v. King. Since then, the State of Ohio has broadened the use of arrestee DNA by subjecting it to familial DNA searches. Ohio’s practice of conducting familial DNA searches of arrestee DNA violates the Fourth Amendment because arrestees have a reasonable expectation of privacy in the information that is extracted from a familial DNA search and it fails both the totality of the circumstances and the special needs tests. Further, these tests go against the intention of the …

Civil Liberty Or National Security: The Battle Over Iphone Encryption, Karen Lowell

Georgia State University Law Review

On June 5, 2013, Edward Snowden released what would be the first of many documents exposing the vast breadth of electronic surveillance the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and the National Security Agency (NSA) had been conducting on millions of United States citizens. Although the federal agencies had legal authority under the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) to collect metadata from companies such as Verizon, many Americans considered this data collection to be a massive invasion of privacy.

Equipped with the knowledge of sweeping domestic surveillance programs, citizens and technology firms fighting for strong privacy and security protection, have started …

Dna Storage Banks: The Importance Of Preserving Dna Evidence To Allow For Transparency And The Preservation Of Justice, Cristina Martin

Chicago-Kent Law Review

What is the duty to preserve information in today’s society? In order for humanity to evolve, change and flourish in the future, society needs to preserve its information from the past. In the criminal justice field, preservation of evidence has special significance. DNA evidence in particular has become a helpful aid for innocent defendants who have been improperly imprisoned. Over the past twenty years, the number of exonerations of imprisoned criminal defendants has increased dramatically. With the advancement of technology, old, previously untestable or improperly tested DNA evidence will need to be retested. However, most states do not have proper …