McClain, James: Courts must act after mistaken identity arrests

By Jared McClain and Daryl James | Institute for Justice

Pizza deliverers check house numbers. Bank tellers, pharmacists and airline staff check IDs. Too often, police act first and worry about accuracy later. They don’t have to worry about the consequences because the legal system protects them from liability.

Jennifer Heath Box is trying to change this. After a family cruise, sheriff’s deputies were waiting for her in Port Everglades in Broward County, Florida. The officers insisted they had a warrant for her arrest on suspicion of child endangerment in Texas, and they ignored Box when she explained they had the wrong woman.

Red flags were clear. The suspect was 23 years younger than Box, lived at a different address, had a different citizen service number, was fifteen centimeters shorter and had a different eye color, hair and skin color.

“How can the police think I’m 26 when I have a 30-year-old child?” Box asked in an interview.

The names didn’t match. The suspect was Jennifer Delcarmen Heath. This was close enough for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.

The officers took Box to jail on Christmas Eve 2022 and held her locked up for three days. Not only did she miss the holidays with her family; she was searched and forced to endure terrible conditions.

Officers blasted death metal over the speakers and deliberately pumped icy air into her cell, making it so cold that she had to sleep back to back with another inmate to stay warm. “You just felt like you weren’t human anymore,” Box says.

She is now filing a lawsuit to hold her abusers accountable. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents her in a case submitted in September. If the pattern of similar lawsuits continues, Box will have to fight to get her case before a jury.

Courts have created a web of different, sometimes overlapping, legal doctrines to prevent victims of government abuse from receiving compensation. In many cases the police are untouchable. It often takes years – sometimes more than a decade – to navigate these doctrines, but no relief is found.

Michigan student James King discovered this in 2014 after two plainclothes officers knocked him unconscious on his way to work. King was innocent and looked nothing like the suspect in the case. However, the 6th Circuit Court of Appeals decided that a particular rule prohibiting filing multiple lawsuits prevented King from filing numerous claims in a single lawsuit. Ten years later, his fight for justice is still in court.

Florida resident David Sosa has been arrested twice since 2014 due to an out-of-state warrant for another David Sosa with different ages, height, weight, social security numbers and tattoos. When the innocent Sosa sued, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled in 2023 that officers do not violate the Constitution if they put the wrong person in jail, as long as they hold the victim for three days.

Trina Martin and her family faced another nightmare in Atlanta. The FBI accidentally raided their home in 2017 and held them at gunpoint after breaking down their front door and launching flash grenades through the windows in the middle of the night.

So far, a lawsuit against the FBI has yielded no results. The 11th Circuit ruled in April 2024, officers will have the freedom to decide how to prepare for a SWAT attack – including not preparing.

In Texas, meanwhile, Waxahachie police went to the wrong address – twice – before raiding the home of Karen Jimerson and her family in March 2019. decided this was okay because the lieutenant in charge had made some preparations for the raid before leaving his office.

King, Sosa, Martin and Jimerson all ran into various barriers created by the judges. Our firm represents Martin and Jimerson as they ask the Supreme Court to intervene. And Box’s case will challenge the rule that denied Sosa relief.

It shouldn’t be this hard for people to get their day in court. At some point, judges must step in and hold police officers accountable for their mistakes.

Just because the police have a warrant to arrest someone or raid a house doesn’t mean they can terrorize everyone who has a similar name or lives nearby. People make mistakes. Throwing someone in jail or storming their house is much more serious than a botched pizza delivery.

Editor’s note: Jared McClain is an attorney at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va. Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice. Comments from readers, for or against, are welcome [email protected].