Woman wrongly accused of carjacking loses lawsuit against Detroit police who used facial tech

DETROIT (AP) — A judge has dismissed a lawsuit against Detroit police in the wrongful arrest of a pregnant woman who was charged in a carjacking partly because of facial recognition technology.

Porcha Woodruff, who was eight months pregnant, spent 10 hours in jail after she was arrested at her suburban Detroit home while getting children ready for school in February 2023. Police admitted she was the wrong suspect, and charges were eventually dropped.

Detroit has changed how it uses facial recognition technology based on Woodruff’s arrest and another case.

U.S. District Judge Judith Levy said Woodruff’s arrest and time in jail “are troubling for many reasons.” But she dismissed a civil rights lawsuit against the officer who prepared the arrest warrant, saying Woodruff’s lawyer didn’t show that the officer lacked probable cause.

The officer was not immediately aware of any “exculpatory evidence” that would have ruled out Woodruff as an accomplice in a carjacking, the judge said in an Aug. 5 decision.

Police put a file photo of Woodruff in a photo lineup after gas station video from the scene was run through facial recognition technology. The carjacking victim picked Woodruff, who was among other women in the lineup.

Woodruff’s attorney, Ivan Land, said investigators should have kept digging and not relied so much on facial recognition.

“We’re just shocked by the decision,” Land said of Levy’s ruling, adding that an appeal is planned.

Land said Detroit offered to settle Woodruff’s lawsuit before the decision but no agreement was reached. The city last year paid $300,000 to a man who was wrongly accused of shoplifting based on facial recognition technology.

Detroit police now won’t arrest people based solely on facial recognition results and won’t make arrests based on photo lineups generated from a facial recognition search.