St. Louis false arrest: Amazon Rekognition's role heads to court

Amazon Web Services has been added as a defendant in a federal lawsuit brought by Christopher Gatlin, a St. Louis man who spent about 17 months in jail after police ran facial recognition on a poor-quality image of a masked suspect.

The amended complaint filed in August 2026 names AWS and identifies Amazon Rekognition as the technology behind the identification that led investigators to Gatlin. It alleges his arrest and prosecution resulted from poor police work, inadequate training and a defective recognition system. The claims are allegations, and the case is unresolved.

How the case began

The case began with the December 7, 2020 assault of a MetroLink security guard in north St. Louis County. The victim repeatedly told police he could not remember his attackers. Detectives obtained surveillance video and submitted an image of one attacker to the St. Louis Mugshot Recognition Technology system.

Court records describe the image as grainy, blurry and shot from a distance above the suspect's face, with a hood and a medical mask covering parts of it. The system still returned candidates including Gatlin, though police had nothing pointing to him before the search.

The photo lineup and the arrest

In August 2021 police showed Gatlin's photograph to the victim in a six-person lineup. Body camera footage later showed he initially leaned toward another man, then wavered before an officer encouraged him to consider complexion and clothing. He eventually selected Gatlin, and that identification became the basis for the charges.

Gatlin was arrested on August 14, 2021. Unable to pay a $75,000 cash bond, he spent about 17 months in jail while the case remained pending; the charges continued until March 2024.

Charges dropped, lawsuit revived

The case began to unravel after defense counsel obtained the body camera recording. In February 2024, St. Louis County Circuit Judge Brian May suppressed the identification, finding officers had departed from accepted lineup procedures. Prosecutors dismissed the charges the following month.

Gatlin sued the officers, St. Louis and St. Louis County in January 2025. In October 2025, U.S. Magistrate Judge Abbie Crites-Leoni declined to dismiss most claims challenged by the city and officer Matthew Welle, finding that his allegations could proceed. The ruling did not establish liability.

What Amazon's guidance says

AWS's current Rekognition documentation says the technology does not support images too blurry or grainy for a human to recognize a face, or images where large portions are obscured; it recommends sharp images and advises against masks. It does not establish which version was used in 2021 or whether the software failed here.

AWS also says facial comparison results should be weighed with other evidence and are predictions about the likelihood that the same person appears in two images, not definitive identifications. A Washington Post investigation in January 2025 found that 15 of 23 police departments had arrested at least one AI-identified suspect without independent evidence.