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Jennifer Heath Box was shivering on a mat on the floor, her back pressed against the back of another prisoner as they desperately tried to keep warm. The air conditioner was blowing a cold breeze Broward County Jail in south Florida. The guards walked around wearing coats and caps.
It was Christmas Eve. Her son, a Marine, was leaving Dec. 27 to spend three years stationed in Okanawa, Japan.
And the police arrested the wrong “Jennifer”.
Jennifer Heath Box was arrested on December 24, 2022 for sharing two-thirds of her name with another woman wanted for child endangerment. (Fox News Digital/Broward Sheriff’s Office via Institute for Justice)
“The fact that it was so easy to arrest me only makes you wonder how many other people [are] out there like this,” Box said Fox News Digitalsitting in her home in Texas two years after she was arrested and imprisoned for three nights on someone else’s warrant.
Box is now suing Broward Sheriff’s Officealleging that deputies violated her Fourth Amendment rights against unreasonable search and seizure when they failed to do “basic due diligence to confirm whether the person they planned to arrest was actually subject to an arrest warrant.”
‘I think you all have the wrong person.’
Box and her husband rushed to the front of the line, eager to get off the cruise ship on Christmas Eve 2022. They had just spent six days at sea with Box’s brother, celebrating his second recovery from cancer. Now Box wanted to come home to celebrate Christmas with her children, the last time the family would be together for at least three years before her son left for Okinawa.
But when she scanned her badge to disembark, staff said security needed to meet with Box. Soon the police and Customs and Border Protection surrounded Box and her husband.
“They asked if I was Jennifer Heath,” she recalled. Box kept Heath as her middle name after she married her husband.
She repeatedly asked the police officers who were standing around her what was happening. They ended up saying they had a warrant out of Harris County, Texas for her.
“It’s because of child endangerment,” the deputy said.
Box’s eyes widened. Her husband said, “I think you have the wrong person.”
Police had a warrant out for “Jennifer Delcarmen Heath,” who was 23 years younger and nearly half a foot shorter than the “Jennifer” who had just gotten off the cruise ship.
Body camera and patrol car footage show the arrest of Jennifer Box on Christmas Eve 2022. (Broward County Sheriff’s Office via Institute for Justice)
According to court filings from July 2022, Jennifer Delcarmen Heath was charged with endangering her children, ages 1 and 3.
Jennifer Heath Box, who was 48 at the time, had no minor children. The suspect in the warrant was younger than one of her daughters.
“Child endangerment? What child would I endanger?” – Box asked in astonishment.
Officers handcuffed her and placed her in a sheriff’s office SUV, where internal video shows Box continuing to insist there must be some mistake as she was transported to the Broward County Jail.
The booking clerk said she didn’t see any warrants in the system for Box when she scanned her driver’s license, but Deputy Peter Peraza insisted they book her anyway, according to a lawsuit filed against the sheriff’s office, Peraza and other deputies and corrections staff.
Box’s lawyers at the Institute for Justice, a non-profit civil liberties law firmsaid Broward County deputies overlooked at least 10 significant discrepancies between Box and the subject of the warrant, including large age and height differences, different Social Security and FBI numbers and contrasting eye, hair and skin colors. The only information pointing to Box was a copy of her DMV photo that was attached to the warrant.
Box felt humiliated and terrified as she was strip-searched, given a prison uniform and placed in a cold, dirty cell, where she said she witnessed constant screaming and violence in the men’s section next door.
She woke up on Christmas morning after a restless night shivering on the floor next to a stranger and was denied bond because the other “Jennifer” had an extradition warrant, the lawsuit alleges. Harris County had up to 30 days to come pick her up, the officer told the Box.
At home, both Boxa’s brother and her husband struggled with layers of bureaucracy. Harris County officials said BSO should have sent them the warrant and Box’s fingerprints for comparison, but BSO refused, the lawsuit says.
Jennifer Box has three children, who were between 19 and 30 years old at the time of her arrest. The suspect on the child endangerment warrant was 25 years old, Hispanic and 5 inches shorter than Box. (Courtesy of Jennifer Box)
Finally, on the evening of December 26, Box was able to file a complaint, asking the BSO to match her fingerprints to the suspect’s.
Box was released from prison around 10 a.m. on December 27. Her son was boarding a flight.
They took things from me that I will never get back, Box said. “I’ll never get that time back with my kids. I’ll never have that opportunity to have those memories.”
She recalled talking to the police officer who escorted her out of detention about everything she had missed during the holidays. His behavior started off “completely arrogant”, she said, but softened when she told him she hadn’t got to see her son before he left for Marine Corps.
“‘Things happen,'” Box remembered the officer saying.
It was the closest she ever got to an apology.
‘No employee misconduct was found’
The Broward Sheriff’s Office said Fox News Digital in a statement that he “sympathizes with the plight of Ms. Jennifer Heath Box,” but blamed Harris County for the accident.
“Had it not been for the arrest warrant filed by the Harris County Sheriff’s Office, Customs and Border Patrol would not have flagged Ms. Box, BSO would not have been notified, and she would not have been arrested,” the spokesperson wrote.
The statement added that “the actions of the BSO deputy involved in the arrest of Ms. Box were reviewed by the Broward Sheriff’s Office Internal Affairs Division and no employee misconduct was found.”
Institute for Justice Attorney Jared McClain said that while Harris County and CBP also made mistakes in the case, that “does not excuse the conduct of Officer Peraza and the Broward County Sheriff’s Office.”
“They had a duty to ensure that the person they were arresting was actually the subject of the warrant – especially in light of Jennifer’s repeated and credible insistence that they had the wrong person.”
CBP flagged Boxa’s name to BSO before she left for the cruise, according to her attorneys, giving agents enough time to confirm her identity “before they decide to arrest the wrong Jennifer.”
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Jennifer Heath Box is one of at least 160 people named “Jennifer Heath” who live in Texas, according to her lawsuit. (Fox News Digital)
BSO made similar mistakes in at least two others mistaken identity arrests, including one in which the man spent five days in jail before police ran his fingerprints and confirmed he was the wrong person, the lawsuit said.
“Despite this history of incarcerating innocent people who share a name with someone with an outstanding warrant, Broward County has failed to adequately train its officers or implement new policies, practices or customs ensuring that BSO personnel verify the identities of arrestees,” the lawsuit states. .
BSO did not respond to Fox’s question about whether the department had made any policy changes since Box’s arrest.
The lawsuit seeks a declaration that the defendants violated Box’s constitutional rights, as well as damages.
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As Box prepared to decorate her Christmas tree this year, she told Fox News Digital that she wants to see more checks and balances so no one else has to go through what she went through.
“I want to hold these people accountable,” she said. “You’re walking into people’s lives. It’s not just like that [fun and games] or whatever and, ‘I’m going to put somebody behind bars, I’m going to check off a field and go home to my family.’ You hurt so many people in this situation besides me.”
Elizabeth Heckman contributed the accompanying video.
