An innocent Texas man was arrested, jailed for nearly two weeks and sexually assaulted just before his release, all because facial recognition software mistakenly identified him as the suspect of a store robbery, a new lawsuit alleges.
When two men robbed a Sunglass Hut in Houston on Jan. 22, 2022, 61-year-old Harvey Murphy Jr. was in a jail cell 2,000 miles away in Sacramento, California, according to the lawsuit obtained by USA TODAY on Wednesday.
Using low-quality surveillance footage of the robbery, artificial intelligence software at the Sunglass Hut falsely identified Murphy as a suspect, which led to a warrant for his arrest, according to the lawsuit filed last week in Harris County District Courts in Houston.
Later when Murphy returned to his home state of Texas, he was arrested, and a witness to the robbery identified him as a suspect. Murphy was held in jail for nearly two weeks until officials realized his alibi proved it was physically impossible for him to be responsible for the robbery.