April 10: Technology: Facial Recognition:Thousands of unlawful arrests? Jason Killinger: His lawsuit accuses Reno police of making thousands of unlawful arrests, The Reno Gazette (Reporter Mark Robison) reports, noting that: "A failure to train Reno police officers on facial recognition software has led to thousands of unlawful arrests, a new legal filing alleges. It’s part of Jason Killinger’s lawsuit against a police officer and the city of Reno. Officer Richard Jager arrested Killinger at the Peppermill after the casino’s facial recognition software claimed he was a 100% match for someone else who’d been banned for sleeping on the property."

PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "Even the general public understands that “having a face that resembles the face of a criminal, without more, does not make anyone guilty of anything,” says Killinger’s new complaint by attorney Terri Keyser-Cooper. “Jager’s conduct was not a sporadic incident involving the wrongful actions of a rogue employee, but the result of a widespread custom and practice involving hundreds of municipal employees making thousands of arrests in the same manner over a period of years,” it says. Not providing training on facial recognition software puts Reno residents and visitors at risk of false arrest, the lawsuit adds."

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PASSAGE TWO OF THE DAY: "The new filing expands on how the city pursued legal action against Killinger even after his real identity was confirmed by a fingerprint check at Washoe County jail. The day after Killinger was arrested and eventually released, Officer Jager filed a police report saying that Killinger gave conflicting IDs to Peppermill security. “Jager has since admitted that Killinger at no time ‘presented’ to the Peppermill conflicting identification or possessed conflicting identification,” the amended lawsuit says."

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PASSAGE THREE OF THE DAY: "After the arrest report was submitted, city prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Killinger under the name “John Doe” and a Reno municipal judge found probable cause for Killinger to be arrested on a trespass charge. A trial was ordered, and even after the case was dismissed, Reno city attorney Jill Drake kept open the door for future prosecution, the lawsuit claims. The city attorney wrote emails saying she found Killinger’s original attorney “cocky” and that she would “love” to find a way to prove a case against Killinger, according to the lawsuit."

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STORY: "Reno police made thousands of unlawful arrests using face ID, suit says," by Reporter Mark Robison, published by The Reno Gazette  Journal, on April 7, 2026.  (Mark Robison is the state politics reporter for the Reno Gazette Journal, with occasional forays into other topics."

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• KEY POINTS: "The Reno Police Department has not implemented a policy on facial recognition software despite widespread knowledge of its limitations, lawsuit says.
• The city of Reno pursued legal action against Jason Killinger even after his identity was confirmed, it says."
• -------------------------------------

A failure to train Reno police officers on facial recognition software has led to thousands of unlawful arrests, a new legal filing alleges.

It’s part of Jason Killinger’s lawsuit against a police officer and the city of Reno.

Officer Richard Jager arrested Killinger at the Peppermill after the casino’s facial recognition software claimed he was a 100% match for someone else who’d been banned for sleeping on the property.

The April 2 filing comes after federal Judge Miranda Du agreed with Killinger that the city could be added as a defendant along with Jager to his lawsuit.

It also details how the city continued to pursue legal action against Jager even after his real identity was confirmed.

The city did not respond to a request for comment on the new complaint and its claim that RPD has engaged in numerous unlawful arrests.

No Reno Police Department training about limits of facial recognition software

As of April 2, 2026, the Reno Police Department has not implemented a policy on facial recognition software or required officers to be trained that a match is not enough by itself to create probable cause for an arrest, Killinger’s lawsuit says.

Not having probable cause to make an arrest is considered a violation of constitutional rights.

The new legal filing claims law enforcement agencies have known for years that computer facial recognition matches should not be the only basis for arresting someone, yet the Reno Police Department maintained such a policy under Chief Kathryn Nance anyway.

In 2017, the U.S. Department of Justice put out a policy template for law enforcement agencies saying facial recognition matches are "advisory in nature" and "do not establish probable cause." Numerous jurisdictions have since taken up this guidance.

Even the general public understands that “having a face that resembles the face of a criminal, without more, does not make anyone guilty of anything,” says Killinger’s new complaint by attorney Terri Keyser-Cooper.

“Jager’s conduct was not a sporadic incident involving the wrongful actions of a rogue employee, but the result of a widespread custom and practice involving hundreds of municipal employees making thousands of arrests in the same manner over a period of years,” it says.

Not providing training on facial recognition software puts Reno residents and visitors at risk of false arrest, the lawsuit adds.

The city attorney’s office, which represents Jager, says the officer behaved properly.

When he was unable to definitively determine Killinger's true identity, the city attorney's office wrote in an earlier legal filing, Jager followed protocol by arresting Killinger in order to get a fingerprint check that would confirm who he was.

City of Reno pursued legal actions against Jason Killinger after real identity confirmed

The new filing expands on how the city pursued legal action against Killinger even after his real identity was confirmed by a fingerprint check at Washoe County jail.

The day after Killinger was arrested and eventually released, Officer Jager filed a police report saying that Killinger gave conflicting IDs to Peppermill security.

“Jager has since admitted that Killinger at no time ‘presented’ to the Peppermill conflicting identification or possessed conflicting identification,” the amended lawsuit says.

Jager's arrest report claims Killinger identified himself as another man about six months earlier, it continues.

“This again is a false statement,” the lawsuit says.

The arrest report did not include that Killinger had three forms of ID in his pocket – including a Real ID – nor did it mention he pleaded with the officer to offer more forms of identification out in his vehicle, it says.

After the arrest report was submitted, city prosecutors filed a criminal complaint against Killinger under the name “John Doe” and a Reno municipal judge found probable cause for Killinger to be arrested on a trespass charge.

A trial was ordered, and even after the case was dismissed, Reno city attorney Jill Drake kept open the door for future prosecution, the lawsuit claims.

The city attorney wrote emails saying she found Killinger’s original attorney “cocky” and that she would “love” to find a way to prove a case against Killinger, according to the lawsuit.

Drake eventually agreed to dismiss the case but without prejudice, meaning it could be brought again, and stated she would refer the case to an RPD fraud detective for investigation into whether Killinger had committed identity theft. The judge indicated the city had one year to bring additional charges or re-open the case.

“Thus,” the lawsuit says, “the nightmare for Killinger continued.”

The RPD fraud investigator reportedly sided with Killinger and determined the Peppermill "screwed up."

“She wrote an email stating there was no ‘identity theft’ and Killinger was an innocent person,” the lawsuit says. “She made clear that RPD could not charge Killinger with the serious charge of identity theft to cover up a wrongful arrest.”

Nonetheless, it adds, a Reno sergeant told Jager months later that there was probable cause to move forward against Killinger for identity theft. Jager declined.

What’s next?

The lawsuit argues Killinger is owed punitive damages, compensation for being hurt while handcuffed, and attorney’s fees. No specific monetary amount is requested in the revised lawsuit.

The city will have a few weeks to respond to Killinger’s revised lawsuit.

A jury trial has been requested, but no trial date has been set.

The entire story can be read at: 

https://www.rgj.com/story/news/2026/04/07/facial-id-lawsuit-reno-police-unlawful-arrests/89491408007/

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.   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.

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; 

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;

April 9: Charles Flores: Texas: Junk hypnosis 'evidence.' 'Riding Shotgun.' The Texas Observer (Reporter Michelle Pitcher) reports that his case is now the subject of an 'Unforgotten' podcast, noting that: "The Dallas County District Attorney’s office hasn’t shown any support for Flores’ appeals, even though it has disavowed its own prosecutions in other cases. It seems that, for the office’s current leadership, the Flores conviction was just. But since 2016, Flores has had the help of tenacious appeals attorney Gretchen Sween, who recently helped Robert Roberson avoid execution in one of the state’s most high-profile death penalty cases in years. For a decade, Sween has picked apart the threads of the state’s case—from Barganier’s legitimacy as a witness to the crucial statements from co-defendants who later got sweet deals—and she’s convinced that the conviction was a house of cards."

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Editor’s Note: The following is a preview of a new podcast released by the Texas Observer and Free Range Productions. Look for The Unforgotten—season five (Episode 6);  “Riding Shotgun”—whereveryou get your podcasts. SPOTIFY LINK: "Introducing... 'The Unforgotten); "Episode Description: "In 1998, a key witness in a murder case underwent police hypnosis to identify who she saw. A year later, her description had completely  changed, The guy she identified?   He's been on death row for nearly three decades. Did the witness get it wrong?"

https://open.spotify.com/episode/630Yk8p0QtMC1nZtKAy4nd

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QUOTE  OF THE DAY: "“They have no DNA. They have no fingerprints. They have no ballistics. They have no fibers—they have nothing that you would think of as objective evidence connecting Charles to this crime scene,” Sween said in an interview last year."

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PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "For the past several months, I’ve been looking into the investigation of the murder of Betty Black and the prosecution of Charles Flores. This March, the Texas Observer and Free Range Productions launched a six-part podcast series about the case. The series is the fifth season of the true-crime podcast The Unforgotten, which is available on all major platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen. To hear the rest of the story I’ve uncovered, just search “The Unforgotten” in your preferred podcast app, and look for season five, “Riding Shotgun.”

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STORY: By Michelle Pitcher;  Published by The Texas Observer on March 23, 2026, under the subheading: "The Observer has  forayed into into the dubious conviction of Charles Flores."

HIST: "Jill Barganier , a petit blonde mother of three from the Dallas suburb of Farmer's Branch, has been asked many times over the past three decades to recall what she saw from her window on January 29, 1998.

That morning, Barganier peered through her blinds and watched an odd car pull up in front of her neighbors’ house. 

It was a pink-and-purple Volkswagen Beetle, with a psychedelic paint job and bumper stickers advocating for peace, love, and the Grateful Dead.

 It seemed unusual for her neighbors, the Blacks, a couple in their 60s whose kids had long since left the house, to get an early-morning visit from hippies.

 The situation turned more bizarre when two men got out of the car. 

The driver, a man who looked about 30 years old, with long, dirty hair and blue eyes, took a swig from a glass beer bottle.

 It was so early—Barganier hadn’t even woken her husband up for work yet.

 Who started drinking before the sun was even up? 

She caught sight of the passenger, too.

 For a moment, he looked in her direction. His hair was also long, down to his shoulders, and his hair and eyes were both darker than his friend’s. 

That’s all she really processed before closing the blinds. 

A few hours later, she’d find out she was perhaps the most critical witness in a murder investigation. 

The two men had broken into her neighbors’ house through the garage and shot and killed Betty Black, who was an unofficial grandma to the kids of the modest neighborhood.

They ransacked the house and left, seemingly without taking anything. 

Black’s husband, Bill, discovered her body when he got home from an early trip to work. 

It didn’t take long for Barganier to identify the driver of the VW in a photo lineup.

 She had gotten a good look at him, and that beer bottle stuck in her mind. 

She picked out a photo of Richard Childs, known to most as Ric, and told police he was the one she’d seen.

For weeks, then months, she wasn’t able to identify the passenger, though.

 She was shown photo lineups and helped create composite sketches—which showed a man who bore a resemblance to Childs—and she even requested that the police hypnotize her to see if she could remember any more relevant details. 

A young officer who’d taken a class on investigative hypnosis two years prior conducted the interview. 

It was his first and last hypnosis interview, and it didn’t yield anything new or explosive. 

It seemed to police as if they’d gotten all the useful information they were going to get out of Barganier. 

Meanwhile, investigators, through other leads, had zeroed in on local drug dealer Charles Flores as the man they believed had been riding shotgun that morning. 

He was a friend of Childs’, a heavy-set Hispanic man who wore his hair shaved or close-cropped. Officers showed his picture to Barganier in one of the lineups, but she shook her head. 

Even so, investigators pursued the case against Flores, fueled largely by intel from the Dallas-area drug scene. 

They built a capital murder case against him, and in 1999, over a year after the murder, they called Barganier to the stand

 There, she dropped a bomb that obliterated the defense’s case.

Before the judge and jury, she declared Flores was, in fact, the man she saw in front of her neighbors’ house that morning. It was a stunning turn of events, after so many months of her being unable to ID anyone and describing a passenger who looked entirely different from the large man on trial.  

The turn also came after she’d seen Flores’ face in news reports about the murder for over a year—and after that seemingly unhelpful hypnosis session. 

Suddenly, she was positive Flores was the guy. With the help of her testimony, the state secured a death sentence.

Flores has now sat on Texas’ death row for nearly half his life, with appeal after appeal shot down by the courts. 

But he remains adamant that he was not the passenger in the car that January morning. 

Barganier’s hypnosis and her stunning about-face on the witness stand have been central to Flores’ appeals efforts.

 But her testimony was just one part of the state’s case against Flores—who had a criminal history and a known temper. 

The Dallas County District Attorney’s office hasn’t shown any support for Flores’ appeals, even though it has disavowed its own prosecutions in other cases.

 It seems that, for the office’s current leadership, the Flores conviction was just.

But since 2016, Flores has had the help of tenacious appeals attorney Gretchen Sween, who recently helped Robert Roberson avoid execution in one of the state’s most high-profile death penalty cases in years. 

For a decade, Sween has picked apart the threads of the state’s case—from Barganier’s legitimacy as a witness to the crucial statements from co-defendants who later got sweet deals—and she’s convinced that the conviction was a house of cards.

“They have no DNA. They have no fingerprints. They have no ballistics. They have no fibers—they have nothing that you would think of as objective evidence connecting Charles to this crime scene,” Sween said in an interview last year.

For the past several months, I’ve been looking into the investigation of the murder of Betty Black and the prosecution of Charles Flores. This March, the Texas Observer and Free Range Productions launched a six-part podcast series about the case. The series is the fifth season of the true-crime podcast The Unforgotten, which is available on all major platforms, including Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you like to listen.

To hear the rest of the story I’ve uncovered, just search “The Unforgotten” in your preferred podcast app, and look for season five, “Riding Shotgun.”

The entire story can be read at: 

riding-shotgun-the-unforgotten-podcast

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.   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.

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;

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;