Hacker News

Angela Lipps spent nearly six months in jail in Tennessee and North Dakota after being misidentified by Fargo police through AI facial recognition in a bank fraud investigation.

It was July 14, the day a team of U.S. Marshals arrested Lipps at her home in Tennessee. She said she was taken away at gunpoint while babysitting four young children. She was booked into her county jail in Tennessee as a fugitive from justice from North Dakota.

Lipps would sit in that Tennessee jail cell for nearly four months. As a fugitive, she was held without bail. Lipps learned, following a Fargo Police Department investigation, she had been charged with four counts of unauthorized use of personal identifying information and four counts of theft in North Dakota.

Officers from North Dakota did not pick up Lipps from her jail cell in Tennessee until Oct. 30 — 108 days after her arrest. The next day she made her first appearance in a North Dakota courtroom to fight the charges.

"If the only thing you have is facial recognition, I might want to dig a little deeper," said Jay Greenwood, the lawyer representing Lipps in North Dakota.

Greenwood immediately asked Lipps for her bank records. Once they were in hand, Fargo police met with him and Lipps at the Cass County jail on Dec. 19. She had already been in jail for more than five months. It was the first time police interviewed her.

On Christmas Eve, five days after the interview with Fargo police, the case was dismissed, and she was released from jail.

Unable to pay her bills from jail, she lost her home, her car and even her dog.

Another life ruined by a dysfunctional 'justice' system, with no consequences to those responsible and no compensation for the victim. How is this acceptable?