Florida Deputies Jailed Her for 3 Days Even Though She Was Obviously Not the Suspect Described in a Warrant

A federal judge cleared the way for Jennifer Heath Box's lawsuit against the cops who misidentified her as a fugitive, despite a "mountain of evidence" that they had the wrong woman.

Around 6 a.m. on Christmas Eve in 2022, Jennifer Heath Box had just returned from a six-day Caribbean cruise when she was confronted by Broward County sheriff's deputies at Port Everglades in Fort Lauderdale. They arrested her based on a warrant for a different woman, Jennifer Delcarmen Heath, who was wanted on child endangerment charges.

Although Heath Box and the suspect were both white women from Texas and had similar names, there were several notable differences. Heath Box lived in Richmond, while the suspect's last known address was in Houston. They had different driver's license numbers, Social Security numbers, and tattoos. Heath Box had red hair, blue-gray eyes, and a fair complexion, while the suspect had black hair, brown eyes, and a medium complexion. Heath Box was five inches taller than the suspect and nearly 23 years older. Needless to say, their fingerprints did not match.

Despite those obvious, readily ascertainable differences, Heath Box spent three days, including Christmas, in jail before the Broward Sheriff's Office (BSO) finally acknowledged that it had the wrong woman. That egregious mistake was "not reasonable," a federal judge ruled this week in an order that allows Heath Box to proceed with the civil rights lawsuit that she filed last year against Broward County Sheriff Gregory Tony and five of his office's employees. U.S. District Judge Melissa Damian also rejected the deputies' claim that they were shielded by qualified immunity, a doctrine that bars federal civil rights claims unless they allege violations of "clearly established" law.

"There were numerous discrepancies between the Suspect's information and the Plaintiff's," Damian writes, and the deputies "had plenty of time to figure out their mistake." That window of opportunity extended beyond the three days of Heath Box's detention, since the BSO first identified her as a fugitive when she left for her cruise, six days before her arrest.

Damian's decision "makes it clear that when police overlook obvious evidence that they're arresting the wrong person, they'll be held accountable," says Jared McClain, one of the Institute for Justice attorneys who are representing Heath Box in her lawsuit. "Anyone who looked at Jennifer should have been able to tell she was not the person police wanted."

During her detention, Damian notes, Heath Box "experienced what is more-or-less typical of any person arrested and detained in jail, including body cavity searches, exposure to violence and unceasing loud noises that made sleep impossible, interactions with condescending and uncaring guards (who, male and female, also watched her shower), [and] enduring unbearably cold temperatures." Meanwhile, Heath Box, her husband, and her brother (who had accompanied the couple on the cruise, along with his wife and children) repeatedly urged her jailers to exercise a modicum of due diligence by verifying that she was not the woman described in the warrant.

"When the arresting deputies detained Plaintiff, she gave them her passport and driver's license, and those deputies passed a copy of the warrant to each other to review the personal information of the Suspect identified in the warrant," Damian notes. Deputy Peter Peraza and Deputy Monica Jean "were present at the arrest, and they tried to settle Plaintiff's and her husband's protests by assuring them that Plaintiff's identify would be verified." But the deputies "never verified that Plaintiff was the Suspect."

While Heath Box was in the back of Peraza's vehicle, Damian says in her summary of the facts alleged by the lawsuit, the deputy "sat at his computer and asked for Plaintiff's full name and eye color, presumably to ascertain if they matched the Suspect's; he even remarked that Plaintiff had fair skin (not medium-toned, like the Suspect) but continued to ignore the mounting evidence that Plaintiff was not the Suspect." While driving Heath Box to jail, Peraza "told her that the warrant matched her date of birth and married name (Box), which was untrue."

After Heath Box arrived at the Broward County Jail, the booking officer, Deputy Jasmine Hines, "scanned [her] driver's license and informed Deputy Peraza that there was no warrant for her arrest in their system." Heath Box alleges that Peraza nevertheless persuaded Hines that they had the right person "because their names were similar and the Suspect's mugshot appeared to look like Plaintiff." But Peraza's arrest affidavit included information contradicting that claim, including Heath Box's address, age, height, eye color, and skin tone.

Heath Box was fingerprinted during booking, and her fingerprints did not match the suspect's. The sheriff's office "would have known" that, Damian notes, "if it required its officers to use fingerprints to confirm that an arrestee is indeed the suspect identified on a warrant."

During Heath Box's booking, her husband and brother "worked tirelessly to convince anyone at BSO to verify [her] identity," Damian writes. After Christmas, they hired a Texas attorney who learned from a deputy in Harris County that Heath Box and the suspect had different birth dates and FBI numbers (which are assigned whenever someone's fingerprints are submitted to the agency, such as when a background check is conducted). The Harris County deputy also discovered that someone at the Houston Police Department had mistakenly attached Heath Box's driver's license photo to the suspect's arrest warrant.

Armed with that information, Heath Box's brother and the attorney "started calling Harris County and Broward County law enforcement to try to correct the mistake." They eventually reached Deputy Anthony Thorpe, who was in charge of Central Intake at the Broward County Jail. Thorpe allegedly "insisted that he could not do anything because it was Plaintiff's responsibility to alert BSO of the issue." Heath Box's brother then contacted officials in Harris County, who said the BSO needed to send them the warrant and Heath Box's fingerprints so they could do a comparison.

The lawsuit alleges that Thorpe initially refused to do that. But "after about a dozen phone calls" from Heath Box's brother (who "happens to be a law enforcement
officer in Georgia," Damian notes), Thorpe "finally agreed to contact Harris County sometime on December 26."

That same day, "a male guard informed Plaintiff that BSO knew she was not the Suspect but that, despite BSO's mistake, the only way for her to go free was for Harris County officials to come get her or for the correct Suspect to be arrested." That night, Heath Box "went to the jail kiosk and filed a complaint, requesting that BSO compare her fingerprints to the Suspect's fingerprints." The next morning, the BSO finally released Heath Box.

"When she was released," according to the lawsuit, "BSO personnel simply told her, 'It happens.'" An investigation by the BSO's Internal Affairs Division "confirmed that the officers followed BSO protocols and did not violate any BSO policies or practices when they detained Jennifer for over 75 hours without confirming that she was the subject of an outstanding warrant."

After Heath Box filed her lawsuit, the deputies argued that they had not violated her Fourth Amendment rights because they had made a "reasonable" mistake. Not so, Damian says after considering the relevant case law in the 11th Circuit, which includes Florida. Even in cases where police had less information indicating that they had arrested the wrong person, she notes, district courts and the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit have allowed unreasonable seizure claims. And in this case, she says, there was a "mountain of evidence" indicating that Heath Box was not the suspect.

The deputies also argued that, even if they had violated Heath Box's Fourth Amendment rights, they had no way of knowing that. But 11th Circuit case law "provides several materially similar decisions that would provide the Deputies a fair warning that their conduct was unlawful," Damian writes. Because those decisions "put them on notice of the unlawfulness of their conduct," she says, they are not entitled to qualified immunity.

Damian also found that Heath Box had plausibly alleged that Sheriff Tony could be held liable for "inadequate policies, practices, and customs that caused the violation of her constitutional rights." The lawsuit cites five specific failures: "(1) officers are not required to cross reference booking documents against the arrest warrant to ensure the correct person is booked into jail; (2) officers who take fingerprints of arrestees are not required to verify those fingerprints against the individual on a warrant; (3) officers are not required to take any additional steps to verify an arrestee's identity when an officer has reason to believe the arrestee is not the subject on the warrant; (4) officers are not required to stop the booking process when an arrestee's identifying information does not match the information on a warrant; and (5) officers are not required to inform a person purporting to be the victim of mistaken identity how they can report BSO's mistake."

The lawsuit highlights two prior mistaken arrests by the BSO that Heath Box says should have alerted Tony to the need for such safeguards. In 2010, Damian notes, the BSO "arrested Paola Londono as she disembarked from a cruise ship pursuant to a warrant for a different person who was seven years older and five inches shorter." And in January 2022, 11 months before Heath Box's ordeal, the BSO "booked a man named Leonardo Silva Oliveria pursuant to an arrest warrant, despite the fact that he was a different age and had different physical characteristics, such as weight and tattoos, from those of the fugitive." Londono and Oliviera were mistakenly jailed for two and five days, respectively.

"These two examples are sufficient to get Plaintiff over the hurdle of showing prior,
similar incidents," Damian says. She adds that the conclusions of the BSO's internal investigators, who found that the deputies had followed BSO protocols and had not violated any relevant policies, bolsters "the inference that the Sheriff had notice of the improper police conduct (here, arresting the wrong person despite glaring red flags indicating a case of mistaken identity) and failed to take remedial action."

The BSO's initial mistake in identifying Heath Box as a fugitive might be understandable given the similarity in names and the photo of Heath Box that Houston police erroneously attached to the warrant. But the BSO's failure to correct that mistake during the six days that Heath Box was on the cruise, at the time of her arrest, when she was booked, or during her three days of detention can only be explained by a combination of arrogance, incompetence, and indifference.

"This whole experience has been traumatizing, so I'm very happy that my lawsuit can move forward and I can finally seek justice for what happened to me," Heath Box says. "When I was in jail, nobody would listen to me that they had arrested the wrong person, and now it feels like somebody is finally listening."