Chicago man, 65, jailed for a year by 'fabricated' AI evidence caught COVID twice in lovckup and thought about ending his life before being freed

An innocent Chicago man held in jail for a year after the police department's ShotSpotter program incorrectly identified him as the gunman in a 2020 murder case said he caught COVID twice while in lockup and contemplated taking his own life before being released last month.  

Michael Williams, 65, was arrested last August, accused of murdering Safarian Herring, 25, who asked Williams for a ride during a night of unrest over police brutality. 

The Chicago Police Department said ShotSpotter - an artificial intelligence-powered hidden-microphone system that detects gunshots - indicated Williams had shot and killed the man inside his car. 

Despite the lack of a motive, weapon or eye-witnesses, Williams was held in Cook County Jail, where he caught COVID twice and made plans to take his own life with a stockpiled stash of pills, he said. 

But after a year, prosecutors found that Williams was in fact just driving Herring to the hospital after the young man was shot by unknown assailants, and that the ShotSpotter recording was tampered with to transform the car's backfiring into gunshot sounds.

Last month, they asked the judge to dismiss the case and free Williams.   

'I kept trying to figure out, how can they get away with using the technology like that against me?' said Williams. 'That´s not fair.'

Michael Williams was behind bars for nearly a year before a judge dismissed the murder case against him in July at the request of prosecutors, who said they had insufficient evidence. He sat for a portrait in his South Side Chicago home on July 27, 2021.

Michael Williams was reunited with his wife, Jacqueline Anderson. On his first night at home, Williams couldn't eat on his own, so Anderson fed him

ShotSpotter equipment overlooking the intersection of South Stony Island Avenue and East 63rd Street in Chicago. The ShotSpotter recording was tampered with to implicate Williams in the 2020 murder of  Safarian Herring

Williams remains shaken. When he walks through the neighborhood, he scans for the acoustic sensors that almost sent him to prison for life.

'The only places these devices are installed are in poor black communities, nowhere else,' he said. 'How many of us will end up in this same situation?'

His wife, Jacqueline Anderson, has remained by his side throughout the entire ordeal. She said Williams suffered from sleepless nights after driving the wounded Herring to the hospital. 

She said their lives came apart when Williams was arrested last August, but the two kept sending each other letters and called each other every day. 

She would help him reminisce of happier times together with their grandchildren to get him through the day. 

Williams said he used to be able to call her three times a day in the beginning, but when that fell into only a few times a week, his mind started going to dark places. 

After being freed, Anderson said she initially had to feed her husband because he was too traumatized to do so himself. 

She added that she holds his hands to calm him when they begin to shake.  

His experience highlights the real-world impacts of society's growing reliance on algorithms to help make consequential decisions about public life. 

This is especially apparent in law enforcement, which has embraced ShotSpotter despite its faults. 

Prosecutors in Chicago have withdrawn the technology's findings in a number of cases due to tampered evidence by police and reports have shown that its sensors are disproportionately placed in minority communities.  

ShotSpotter, says its evidence has increasingly been admitted in courtrooms, now some 200. ShotSpotter´s website says it´s a leader in policing technology solutions that helps stop gun violence by using algorithms to classify 14 million sounds as gunshots or something else.

But an Associated Press investigation, based on thousands of internal documents, emails and confidential contracts, along with dozens of interviews, has identified serious flaws in using ShotSpotter evidence in court.

AP´s investigation found the system can miss live gunfire right under its microphones, or misclassify sounds of fireworks or cars backfiring as gunshots. ShotSpotter's forensic reports have been used in court to improperly claim that a defendant shot at police, or provide questionable counts of the number of shots fired.

Activists in Chicago are demand the city's police department end its contract with ShotSpotter, an AI-powered hidden-microphone system used to detect gunshots

Police departments in cities across the country and some oversees have relied on the technology to increase their response times

There were also cases of tampering due to police interference.  

During 2016 testimony in a Rochester, New York officer-involved shooting trial, ShotSpotter´s engineer Paul Greene said an employee reclassified sounds from a helicopter to a bullet because Rochester police told them to.

In the Williams case, evidence in pre-trial hearings shows ShotSpotter first said the noise the sensor picked up was a firecracker but a ShotSpotter employee relabeled it a gunshot.

Later, a ShotSpotter engineer changed the reported Chicago address of the sound to the street where Williams was driving, about 1 mile away, court documents show. ShotSpotter said the report was corrected to match the actual location that the sensors had identified.

It was never made clear why the changes were made and who ordered them to be changed. 

ShotSpotter insists it warned prosecutors not to rely on its technology to detect gunshots inside vehicles or buildings, citing language in its $33 million Chicago police department contract.

Jacqueline Anderson watches as her husband, Michael Williams, takes their dogs, Lily and Shibey, out in the backyard of their home

This undated photo provided by the family in August 2021 shows shooting victim Safarian Herring of Chicago. Two weeks before being fatally shot in May 2020, he had survived a shooting at a bus stop

A man walks past one of the many closed business along East 79th Street in Chicago on Friday, Aug. 13, 2021, in a neighborhood on the South Side near where Herring was shot

Williams´ attorney Brendan Max said prosecutors never shared this critical information.

Williams has always maintained that on the day of incident, Herring had waved him down for a ride. Williams told police that a vehicle pulled up beside him and someone shot Herring.

'I was hollering to my passenger `Are you ok?´' said Williams. 'He didn´t respond.'

He sped to the emergency room. Herring died a few days later.

Three months later, police showed up, and after an interrogation they charged Williams with first-degree murder.

'When he told me that, it was just like something in me had just died,' said Williams.

On the night of the shooting, ShotSpotters sensors identified a loud noise the system initially assigned to 5700 S. Lake Shore Dr., according to an alert the company sent police. That material anchored prosecutors´ theory that Williams shot Herring inside his car, even though the supplementary police report didn´t cite a motive, mention eyewitnesses, or a recovered gun.

Prosecutors also leaned on a surveillance video showing that Williams´ car ran a red light, as did another car that appeared to have its windows up, ruling out that the shot came from the other car´s passenger window, they said.

Chicago police did not respond to AP's request for comment. The Cook County State's Attorney's Office said in a statement that after careful review prosecutors 'concluded that the totality of the evidence was insufficient to meet our burden of proof.'

Michael Williams remains shaken over his experience and continues to question the validity of the ShotSpotter program that led to his wrongful incarceration

Jacqueline Anderson said she did her best to keep her husband's mind at ease while he was in prison, telling him to remember all the joy he's experience with his family

Letters written by Michael Williams to his wife, Jacqueline Anderson, and a card she sent him and sealed with a lipstick kiss are just a few samples of the correspondence between the two

Family photos sit on a mantle in the South Side Chicago home of the reunited couple

ShotSpotter touts its algorithm-backed technology as virtually foolproof. But its algorithms are a trade secret, largely inscrutable to the public, jurors and police oversight boards.

The company identifies possible gunshots with the acoustic sensors. Then ShotSpotter employees listen to audio recordings of those sounds, and confirms or changes the source of sounds, introducing the possibility of human bias. Employees can and do modify the location or number of shots fired at the request of police, according to court records. And in the past, city dispatchers or police themselves could make some of these changes.

Amid a nationwide debate over racial bias in policing, civil rights advocates say the criminal justice system shouldn´t outsource some of society´s weightiest decisions to computer code.

ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark said details about artificial intelligence are 'not really relevant.'

'The point is anything that ultimately gets produced as a gunshot has to have eyes and ears on it,' said Clark. 'Human eyes and ears, ok?' 

ShotSpotter CEO Ralph Clark says the company is constantly improving its system, but it still logs a small percentage of false positives. He is pictured at his office in Newark, California

As ShotSpotter´s gunshot detection systems expand around the country, so has its use as courtroom evidence - including 91 cases in the past 4 years.

'Our data compiled with our expert analysis help prosecutors make convictions,' said a recent ShotSpotter press release.

Police chiefs call ShotSpotter a game-changer. The technology has been installed in about 110 American cities, often disproportionately placed in Black and Latino communities. Law enforcement officials say it helps get officers to crime scenes quicker making their neighborhoods safer.

But academic researchers who reviewed 68 large, metropolitan counties from 1999 to 2016 found that the technology didn´t reduce gun violence or increase community safety.