A man charged with robbery in Oregon is seeking to dismiss his case after police admitted to digitally altering his mugshot used in a photo line-up. Tyrone Lamont Allen, 50, faces charges for four bank robberies in the Portland area in 2017.
Police edited the image to remove Allen's distinctive facial tattoos and darken his skin, arguing it was to prevent the photo from 'standing out' in the line-up. The altered images were first reported by the Oregonian newspaper.
Allen's lawyer, Mark Ahlemeyer, argued the editing was done to make his client more closely resemble the suspect, calling it 'a very, very slippery slope given the advent of technology'. Prosecutors countered that the suspect's 'immutable facial features' were similar enough, and that investigators 'applied the digital equivalent of makeup' to the picture.
Portland Police Detective Brett Hawkinson testified that the alteration aimed to 'mask things that would stand out'. Forensic criminologist Mark Weber, who performed the edit, acknowledged he had done similar alterations for other line-ups without documenting them.
Ahlemeyer raised concerns about the precedent, asking if police could black out a suspect's teeth or adjust skin colour. US District Judge Marco A Hernandez has said he will soon rule on the admissibility of the photo.
