By Jared McClain and Daryl James | Institute for Justice
Pizza delivery drivers check house numbers. Bank tellers, pharmacists and airline workers check IDs. Far too often, however, the police act first and worry about accuracy later. They don’t have to worry about consequences because the court system shields them from accountability.
Jennifer Heath Box is trying to change this. After a family cruise, the sheriff’s deputies were waiting for her at Port Everglades in Broward County, Florida. The deputies 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 obvious. The suspect was 23 years younger than Box, lived at a different address, had a different Social Security number, and was five inches shorter with different color eyes, hair and skin tone.
“How could police think I am 26 when I have a 30-year-old child?” Box asked in an interview.
The names did not match. The suspect was Jennifer Delcarmen Heath. This was close enough for the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.
The deputies took Box to jail on Christmas Eve 2022 and kept her locked up for three days. She did not just miss the holidays with her family; she was strip-searched and forced to endure horrible conditions.
Officers blasted death metal over the speakers, and they purposely pumped freezing air into her cell, making it so cold she had to sleep back-to-back with another inmate to keep warm. “You just felt like you weren’t a human anymore,” Box says.
She is now suing to hold her abusers accountable. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents her in a case filed in September. If the pattern of similar lawsuits continues, Box will have to fight to get her case in front of 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 over a decade — to navigate these doctrines, only to find no relief.
Michigan college student James King discovered this in 2014 after two plainclothes officers beat 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 against bringing multiple lawsuits prevented King from bringing numerous claims in a single suit. Ten years later, his fight for justice is still in the courts.
Florida resident David Sosa has been arrested twice since 2014 because of an out-of-state warrant for a different David Sosa with different ages, height, weight, Social Security numbers and tattoos. When the innocent Sosa sued, the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals held in 2023 that officers do not violate the Constitution when they put the wrong person in jail so long as they hold the victim for only three days.
Trina Martin and her family faced a different nightmare in Atlanta. The FBI raided their home by mistake in 2017 and held them at gunpoint after busting open their front door and launching flashbang grenades through the windows in the middle of the night.
So far, a lawsuit against the FBI has gone nowhere. The 11th Circuit ruled in April 2024 that agents have discretion to decide how to prepare for a SWAT raid — including by 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. The 5th Circuit Court of Appeals decided this was OK because the lieutenant in charge did some preparation for the raid before leaving his office.
King, Sosa, Martin and Jimerson all ran into different judge-made barriers. 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 should not be this difficult for people to get their day in court. At some point, judges must step up and hold police officers responsible for their mistakes.
Just because the police have a warrant to arrest someone or raid a house does not mean they can terrorize anyone who has a similar name or lives nearby. People make mistakes. Throwing someone in jail or storming their home is far more serious than a botched pizza delivery.
Editor’s note: Jared McClain is an attorney at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Virginia. Daryl James is a writer at the Institute for Justice. Reader reactions, pro or con, are welcomed at AzOpinions@iniusa.org.
