New Jersey’s Supreme Court has ruled that criminal defendants are entitled to information about the facial recognition technology police used to investigate them, even when prosecutors do not plan to introduce that evidence at trial. The unanimous decision, issued June 24 in State v. Miles, is one of the first rulings from a state high court to apply this kind of discovery requirement to facial recognition.
Writing for the court, Justice Lee Solomon Fasciale held that prosecutors must disclose information identifying the facial recognition system used in an investigation and explain how it was used to identify or investigate a defendant. The court said such material could be relevant to challenging the reliability of the technology, questioning how thorough an investigation was, impeaching witness identifications, and exploring whether someone else committed the crime. Defendants, it said, have a constitutional right to a meaningful opportunity to present a complete defense.
The court stopped short of ordering disclosure of proprietary details such as a system’s source code. It said defendants seeking trade-secret information must first show a particularized need for it, and found the record in this case was not developed enough to make that determination. In doing so, the justices rejected what they called a mechanical application of the 2023 Appellate Division decision in State v. Arteaga, which had required disclosure of 13 categories of facial recognition material, and said discovery requests should instead be weighed case by case.
The case stems from the prosecution of Tybear Miles, charged with murder and weapons offenses in a 2021 fatal shooting in Jersey City. Police ran a facial recognition search on an Instagram profile photo tied to a suspect and identified Miles among several possible matches, and other people later identified him in surveillance images, though no witness identified him as the shooter. The case returns to the trial court.
The ruling adds to a record of scrutiny over facial recognition in New Jersey, where IDEMIA technology was used in a 2019 misidentification that led to a wrongful arrest, and where lawmakers have advanced a biometric surveillance bill carrying civil penalties. The American Civil Liberties Union of New Jersey, which took part as an amicus alongside the national ACLU and the Innocence Project, welcomed the decision.
“Today’s decision by the New Jersey Supreme Court in State v. Miles is a major victory for civil liberties,” said Dillon Reisman, a staff attorney at the ACLU of New Jersey, who said the ruling opens the door to greater transparency as police adopt new technologies.
Sources: New Jersey Courts, ACLU of New Jersey
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By the ID Tech Editorial Team
