ABSTRACT: "Police officers, like the citizens they serve, often believe that they can accurately and reliably discern emotions from the faces of individuals they encounter on street patrol. An officer, for instance, might interpret a facial expression to infer that an individual is surprised by the officer’s presence, which can serve as a factor justifying a seizure based on reasonable articulable suspicion of criminal activity. Judges, for their part, often defer to the facial emotion recognition (FER) wherewithal of police when assessing the sufficiency of police assertions of reasonable suspicion.
There is a major problem, however, with the accepted wisdom: it lacks empirical support. As a growing body of research shows, human faces are not like emojis or emoticons; not only is the purported connection between particular emotions and facial expressions weak, but facial expressions themselves are variously interpreted. Moreover, FER depends on multiple individualized factors such as the viewer’s age, gender, personality traits, life experiences, and emotional intelligence, and whether the viewer and viewed are of the same racial or ethnic background. Worse yet, conventional experimental studies advanced in support of FER suffer from major methodological problems, undercutting its averred accuracy and reliability.
This essay aims to explode the myth of FER and urges its judicial disregard in the assessment of whether police have reasonable suspicion to detain an individual. The intervention is as timely as it is important. In the immediate term, allowing continued judicial reliance on an empirically unfounded data point raises obvious constitutional concern. Longer term, reliance on FER is problematic because it is now being combined with artificial intelligence technology, soon to likely include roboticized policing and “emotiveillance” efforts more generally. To neutralize these threats, the essay urges that, like similar pseudo-sciences of the past, such as phrenology and physiognomy, FER should be relegated to the dustbin of history, rather than serving as an accepted basis for police seizures, with all the significant personal and social harms they impose."
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PUBLISHER'S NOTE: I am monitoring this case/issue/resource. Keep your eye on the Charles Smith Blog for reports on developments. The Toronto Star, my previous employer for more than twenty incredible years, has put considerable effort into exposing the harm caused by Dr. Charles Smith and his protectors - and into pushing for reform of Ontario's forensic pediatric pathology system. The Star has a "topic" section which focuses on recent stories related to Dr. Charles Smith. It can be found at: http://www.thestar.com/topic/charlessmith. Information on "The Charles Smith Blog Award"- and its nomination process - can be found at: http://smithforensic.blogspot.com/2011/05/charles-smith-blog-award-nominations.html Please send any comments or information on other cases and issues of interest to the readers of this blog to: hlevy15@gmail.com. Harold Levy: Publisher: The Charles Smith Blog;
SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/47049136857587929
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices.
Lawyer Radha Natarajan;
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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FINAL, FINAL WORD: "Since its inception, the Innocence Project has pushed the criminal legal system to confront and correct the laws and policies that cause and contribute to wrongful convictions. They never shied away from the hard cases — the ones involving eyewitness identifications, confessions, and bite marks. Instead, in the course of presenting scientific evidence of innocence, they've exposed the unreliability of evidence that was, for centuries, deemed untouchable." So true!
Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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YET ANOTHER FINAL WORD:
David Hammond, one of Broadwater’s attorneys who sought his exoneration, told the Syracuse Post-Standard, “Sprinkle some junk science onto a faulty identification, and it’s the perfect recipe for a wrongful conviction.
https://deadline.com/2021/11/alice-sebold-lucky-rape-conviction-overturned-anthony-broadwater-123488014
