Left: Jennifer Heath Box during initial encounter with law enforcement. Right: after she was taken off to jail (Institute for Justice).
A Texas woman with three grown children was stunned on Christmas Eve in 2022 when law enforcement accused her of being wanted for child endangerment as she disembarked from a Royal Caribbean cruise in Florida that was meant to celebrate her brother beating cancer for the second time. As it turns out, Jennifer Heath Box’s lawsuit against Broward County said that she was the victim of “mistaken identity” because deputies ignored “obvious” discrepancies between her information and the woman — with a similar name and also from Texas — who was actually the subject of the warrant.
Jennifer Heath Box, 50, represented by the Institute for Justice, filed suit Thursday in Florida against the Broward County, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office, deputies Peter Peraza and Monica Jean, and two corrections employees, claiming that she was forced to stay in jail for three days over Christmas, that guards subjected her to a “body cavity” search and “watched” her while she showered, and that she missed a chance to see her son before he left for his “three-year tour with the Marines” — only to be told “it happens” when she was let go.