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A man is suing the owners of Sunglass Hut and Macy’s after he was falsely identified as a suspect in a 2022 armed robbery at a Sunglass Hut in Houston, Texas. (Associated Press)
A Texas man filed a lawsuit against the owners of Sunglass Hut and Macy’s after he was falsely identified as a violent armed robber through facial technology.
Harvey Eugene Murphy Jr., 61, was visiting Sacramento, California, on Jan. 22, 2022. At the same time, two men barged into the Sunglass Hut in Houston about 2,000 miles away and robbed the store at gunpoint. One of the men forced two terrified employees into a back storeroom and told them to stay until the criminals left. The men got away with thousands of dollars worth of cash and sunglasses and fled in a vehicle with a stolen license plate.
As Houston police detectives were investigating, Anthony Pfleger, the head of security for Sunglass Hut’s parent company EssilorLuxottica, contacted them to say they identified one of the robbers through facial recognition technology. Murphy was their guy, Pfleger allegedly told the detectives. Murphy had also robbed the store on a previous occasion along with a nearby Macy’s, Pfleger said, according to the lawsuit.
One of the employees identified Murphy as the robber in a photo lineup, although the lawsuit claims the employee was “prepped” before seeing the lineup. Houston police issued a warrant for Murphy’s arrest and he was taken into custody at the DMV when he went to renew his license.
“Obviously, Murphy was confused because — as he repeatedly told HPD — he had not done anything wrong for many years,” the lawsuit said.
Murphy hadn’t been arrested since the early 1990s. When a judge arraigned Murphy on the charges, he learned it occurred when he was in California. His court-appointed attorney relayed the information to prosecutors who dropped the charges.
But a few hours before he was to be released, he was followed into a bathroom by three fellow inmates.
“He was beaten, forced on the ground, and brutally gang raped,” the lawsuit said. “After this violent attack, one of the criminals held a shank against his neck and told him that if he reported the rape to anyone, he would be murdered. Murphy crawled to his bunk and faced the wall praying these men would not attack him again.”
Murphy is requesting at least $10 million. The lawsuit, filed last week in Harris County, Texas, also names Pfleger and the two Sunglass Hut employees. Macy’s declined to comment and EssilorLuxottica did not return an email seeking comment.
While facial recognition can be accurate when comparing two well-lit posed photos such as driver’s licenses or mug shots, it can be trickier with images that come from surveillance cameras. The Associated Press reported last September that at least five Black plaintiffs had sued police agencies in recent years for false arrests using facial recognition technology.
“Murphy’s story is tragic. But worse than that, it is scary for everyone in this country,” the lawsuit said. “Any one of us could be improperly charged with a crime and jailed based solely on error-prone facial recognition software. The companies that use this kind of software know it has a high rate of false positives, but they still use it to positively identify alleged criminals.”
