This AI Tool Helped Convict People of Murder. Then Someone Took a Closer Look
Global Intelligence claims its Cybercheck technology can help cops find key evidence to nail a case. But a WIRED investigation reveals the smoking gun often appears far less solid.
Just after 9 pm on an August night in 2020, Kimberly Thompson and Brian James pulled the car into a driveway in Akron, Ohio, and stepped out into a barrage of gunfire. They were shot in the legs, rushed to a hospital, and survived. But Thompson’s 20-month-old grandson, Tyree Halsell, who was still sitting in the car, was shot in the head and mortally wounded.
In the aftermath, Akron police collected video footage from the neighborhood and asked for the public’s help with identifying two men who’d been seen approaching the victims, firing, then fleeing in a truck. Within months, detectives narrowed in on a suspect, Phillip Mendoza, and obtained a search warrant for his cell phone location data from Sprint, according to court records. They also served a geofence warrant on Google, seeking information on devices whose GPS, Wi-Fi, or Bluetooth records placed them near the scene of the shooting. Neither warrant turned up any evidence locating Mendoza or his devices on the 1200 block of Fifth Avenue, where the shooting occurred, that night.
Article