Weekly Column: Juvenile Deception, Facial Recognition and Medical Record Transparency

The following is my column that will appear in the Mt. Vernon Gazette, Springfield Connection, The Prince William Times, The Fort Hunt Herald, and Potomac Local in the week of February 21, 2022.

Juvenile Deception, Facial Recognition and Medical Record Transparency

               The sixth week of the General Assembly brought us to “Crossover” – the moment when each chamber must finish work on bills originating in each chamber and we begin work on bills coming from the other side.

               Twenty-five of my twenty-seven bills were passed by the Senate and will now be heard in the House of Delegates.  On the last day of session, I defended eight bills on the floor of the Senate alone.  I will discuss several in this column that I have not covered in prior columns. 

               In 1969, the Supreme Court of the United States held that it was constitutionally permissible for law enforcement to lie to suspects during interrogation to gain information for prosecution.  Several states have questioned the fundamental fairness of using this tactic to juveniles who are not as sophisticated and are more susceptible to persuasion than adults.  False confessions are involved in about thirty-five percent of wrongful convictions and there is a plethora of cases involving juveniles who wrongfully confessed. 

My legislation would prohibit law enforcement from using deception tactics during a custodial interrogation of a juvenile and shift the burden of showing a confession was voluntary to the government if these tactics were used.  It passed the Senate on a bipartisan 26-14 vote.

I also carried a bill that will allow the limited use of facial recognition technology to develop leads in criminal investigations and for use in specific community welfare situations.  Last year, we passed legislation prohibiting facial recognition from being used in Virginia law enforcement due to concerns about accuracy across racial subgroups.  The Fairfax County Police Department had previously used this technology over 12,000 times with no false positives. 

More recently, you may have read about the “shopping cart killer” who was arrested on U.S. 1 near the Penn Daw Wal-Mart pushing two dead bodies in containers in a shopping cart.  He was later linked to three other murders across the country.  Facial recognition companies have additional information about him, but the FCPS is prohibited from obtaining or using it by statute.  This technology can also be used to identify individuals without identification such as lost adults with dementia, people unable to provide information due to medical emergencies such as strokes or concussions, or dead bodies.  Police cannot use this technology even if no foul play is suspected. 

The National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST) has begun a program that now certifies many facial recognition technologies as being 98-99% accurate with minor deviations across racial subgroups.  Many are being used in national security applications, for air travel, and for trusted-traveler programs such as Global Entry run by U.S. Border and Customs Control.  My legislation would allow it to be used for specific investigations and community welfare incidents, but not for general surveillance or monitoring.  It passed the Senate on a bipartisan vote.

               I am also working with the Virginia Chapter of the Humane Society on legislation to modernize Virginia Law relating to the sexual abuse of animals.  While Virginia currently prohibits beastiality, it does not have criminal sanctions for individuals who traffic in animals for sexual abuse or for the manufacturing or possession of “animal porn” which has all been shown to have strong correlation with child sexual abuse and other sex crimes.  Detectives also testified at our hearing regarding suspects destroying child pornography during raids, but separately storing or keeping their animal porn because they knew it was not illegal.  My bill passed the Senate unanimously. 

               Medical records have become electronic over the last two decades.  However, when a doctor makes a change on your chart, you can no longer see the scratches to show the change and the edits are often invisible without careful inspection.  I carried legislation requiring medical providers to produce the audit history for medical records so that patient can quickly see any changes made to their contemporaneous medical records.

               Next week, we move on to the budget and action on legislation that has crossed over.  Please complete my constituent survey at www.scottsurovell.org/survey and if you have feedback, send me an email at scott@scottsurovell.org.