09/09/2025
I resolved a similar case against a central Florida law enforcement agency. The warrant was correct but the investigation into determining the name was extraordinarily shoddy. The woman who helped a bad guy got away, so the crack detective took to a "database" (we're convinced it was Facebook) and figured out the guy had a girlfriend with a name similar to my client. Trouble is, my client had never been to that area of the state, was 20 years older than the gal-pal, had absolutely no criminal record, and didn't even remotely favor her physically. A 30-second review would show the woman down here in SW Florida was the wrong person. But, she was arrested on the warrant for a felony charge in front of her family, spent a long, miserable night in jail, and had to bail out with an ankle monitor. Of course, the agency still cried and whined about sovereign immunity before we favorably settled.
Jennifer Heath Box had just returned from a six-day Caribbean cruise in 2022 when she was confronted by Broward County sheriff's deputies in Fort Lauderdale.
She spent three days, including Christmas, in jail—but they had the wrong woman.
Deputies were looking for another Texas woman with a similar name, but that's where the similarities end.
Heath Box is 5 inches taller and 23 years older than the woman described in the arrest warrant. She 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 fingerprinted during booking. But officers did not compare her fingerprints to the suspect’s until she and her family repeatedly urged them to do so.
"It happens," jail personnel reportedly told Heath Box after she was finally released. An internal investigation concluded that the deputies followed all relevant protocols and policies.
Heath Box filed a civil rights lawsuit against the Broward County sheriff and five of his office's employees. Deputies argued that they had not violated her Fourth Amendment rights because they had made a "reasonable" mistake.
Will the officers be held accountable? A federal judge just made a ruling in the case: https://reason.pub/42abve6
