In a legal action scheduled for next week against the parent company of Macy’s and Sunglass Hut, a Texas grandfather claimed that he had been falsely accused of multiple armed robberies. Court documents obtained by HuffPost revealed that the lawsuit alleged their organization used artificial facial recognition software to misidentify him.
Harvey Murphy Jr., 61, charged Macy’s, Sunglass Hut, and EssilorLuxottica with negligence and false imprisonment after being wrongfully detained for a robbery he didn’t commit.
According to court documents obtained by HuffPost, Murphy’s legal case was dropped months after he was arrested as a suspect in an armed assault that occurred in January 2022 at a Sunglass Hut in the Houston area.
Following the assault, Houston Police responded to the store, where they encountered a member of EssilorLuxottica, according to Harvey’s complaint.
A person files a lawsuit against Macy’s, Sunglass Hut, and its family business EssilorLuxottica for false imprisonment, alleging that its AI facial recognition software misidentified him as being involved in an armed robbery that took place in Houston.
The member claimed to have worked with Macy’s damage prevention team to use facial recognition software and artificial intelligence to identify Murphy as the armed robber.
An employee of Sunglass Hut informed Houston Officers that they recognized Murphy as the perpetrator in prior armed robberies, according to a legal complaint obtained by HuffPost.
The lawsuit alleged that EssilorLuxottica employees coached that individual to identify Murphy as the robber during a police lineup.
Harvey allegedly visited a Texas DMV in October of that same year to renew his license before being apprehended by the police.
“He had no idea what was going on,” the complaint stated. “All he knew was that a criminal arrest warrant was taking him to the Harris County Jail.”
According to the lawsuit, Murphy was “beaten, assaulted, and left with permanent and severe life-long injuries” after being sent to an “overcrowded maximum-security prison” where he spent about 10 days.
Murphy informed his defense attorney that the record indicated he was 2,000 miles away in Sacramento, California, making it impossible for him to have committed the robbery on January 22, 2022.
Murphy’s case was dismissed in November 2023 after Sacramento County confirmed he wasn’t in Houston from October 2021 to at least February 2022, according to an order obtained by HuffPost.
Three inmates followed Murphy into the restroom hours before he was released from prison and assaulted him there, according to the documents.
Murphy’s lawyer, Daniel Dutko, told HuffPost on Wednesday that while his client is trying to move on from what happened to him, he is also reliving every horrific event.
In an email to HuffPost, Dutko stated that “When I asked him about the media attention this case was receiving, he said it was difficult for him to keep revisiting what happened to him, but I hoped that the attention might prevent this from happening to anyone else in the future.”
Dr. Adam Scott Wandt, an associate professor at John Jay College of Criminal Justice, stated that detaining people solely based on AI visual identification is “a very poor way to conduct policing.” Although “we still sometimes see police agencies across the United States making this mistake,” he claimed that law enforcement has largely learned from it.
Proper training and protocols are crucial to “help law enforcement understand that relying solely on visual identification is not enough evidence to incarcerate people,” according to Wandt.
“In this case, apparently innocent people faced extremely serious consequences due to what may have been very flawed research,” Wandt continued. “I think corporate America and law enforcement agencies across the United States need to examine this case very closely.”
When contacted by HuffPost, Macy’s declined to comment on pending litigation.
EssilorLuxottica did not immediately respond to HuffPost’s request for comment.
