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…