Killinger v. Jager

In September 2023, Jason Killinger was arrested at Peppermill Casino in Reno when casino security suddenly surrounded him, took him to the casino’s security office and detained him until a Reno police officer arrived. Mr. Killinger was arrested because the casino’s facial recognition security camera system alerted to Mr. Killinger being a possible match for another individual who had been banned from the premises.

When Mr. Killinger produced his valid commercial driver’s license to prove that he was not the individual who had been banned from the casino, the police officer concluded that the facial recognition result must be correct and surmised, without support, that Mr. Killinger’s identification was therefore fraudulent. After transporting Mr. Killinger to jail, a fingerprint search revealed that he was, in fact, who he said he was. A detective investigated and concluded that the casino’s facial recognition technology was wrong.

The brief asks the court to rule that police lacked probable cause to arrest Mr. Killinger based on a facial recognition technology result because facial recognition technology is fundamentally unreliable. The brief also asks the court to rule that the City of Reno is liable for Mr. Killinger’s wrongful arrest. The risk that officer’s’ overreliance on facial recognition technology would lead to violations of constitutional rights was so obvious and foreseeable that failing to provide training to Reno Police Department officers amounts to deliberate indifference.