Woman Sues After Mistaken Arrest Leads to ‘Degrading’ Christmas Jailing

A Texas woman sued a Florida sheriff’s office on Thursday after a mistaken arrest led to a “degrading” jailing on Christmas two years ago.

Jennifer Heath Box was debarking a cruise ship at Fort Lauderdale’s port on Christmas Eve in 2022 after a family vacation. Box and her husband planned to fly home to Houston to spend Christmas with their children, including their son, a U.S. Marine, before he left for a three-year deployment in Japan.

Instead, Box spent Christmas in a cold jail cell listening to death metal music after the Broward County Sheriff’s Office arrested the wrong woman, according to a federal civil rights lawsuit filed by Box on Thursday.

Sheriff deputies accused Box, a 50-year-old financial systems administrator, of being a woman over two decades younger than her who was wanted in Harris County, Texas, for felony child endangerment.

Harris County accidentally put Box’s photo on the warrant for the wanted woman, but Box’s middle and last name were different from the ones on the warrant, and there were multiple physical discrepancies. Box was 23 years older and 5 inches taller than the suspect, and she had a different eye color, hair, and skin tone.

“I’ve never done anything to where I would find myself on the other side of bars,” Box said at a press conference on Thursday. “It was really difficult for me because I had to call my kids and tell them that I wasn’t going to be there” for Christmas.

Box called her treatment by the Broward County Sheriff’s Office “humiliating” and “degrading.”

They kept her in custody for three days, during which she was subject to a body cavity search, according to the lawsuit. Box said that she was kept an extra day after Harris County told the Broward County Sheriff’s Office that they had the wrong woman, and she missed her son’s departure.

She also said that a male inmate tried to enter her cell several times during her booking process, which she said was “terrifying,” and that she and her cellmate had to sleep together back-to-back to keep warm as she was given a thin jail uniform even though the jail was extremely cold.

The sheriff’s office said in a statement on Thursday that it “sympathizes” with Box but that the department and deputies Peter Peraza and Monica Jean did nothing wrong, blaming Texas authorities for the situation.

“The BSO deputy [Peraza] followed the appropriate protocols in handling this matter, and after receiving confirmation of the Harris County warrant, arrested Ms. Box,” the statement read. “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.”

Box was targeted for arrest before her cruise ship even docked as U.S. Customs and Border Patrol (CBP) matched her to the Harris County arrest warrant after doing a background check on Box per standard cruise procedures. CBP officers stopped Box during her departure from the cruise ship and summoned Peraza and Jean.

Box’s attorney, Jared McClain of the nonprofit Institute for Justice, said Harris County isn’t being sued because one employee made a mistake. Meanwhile, the Broward County Sheriff’s Office repeatedly refused to look at the evidence and correct a seemingly obvious mistaken arrest even when contacted by Box’s brother, a Georgia police officer.

“At none of those red flags did anyone in Broward County stop and say, ‘Maybe we’re making a mistake here. Maybe we shouldn’t put this woman in jail over Christmas.’ So that’s why we’re here in Broward County,” McClain said.

According to body camera video, Box also seemingly tried to point out the warrant’s discrepancies during her arrest.

While the lawsuit doesn’t seek a specific amount of money, McClain said Box and her family lost thousands of dollars in additional hotel and legal costs because of the mistaken arrest.

This article includes reporting from The Associated Press.