A New Jersey woman who was arrested in a case of mistaken identity and detained for two weeks cannot sue the federal marshals who arrested her because they are protected by qualified immunity, a court has ruled.
Judith Maureen Henry was incarcerated at Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark in 2019 after sheriff's deputies mistakenly believed she was a woman of the same name who had pleaded guilty to drug possession in Pennsylvania in 1993 and flunked parole.
Henry tried to sue the deputies over the mistake, but a three-judge appeals panel ruled Thursday that the deputies acted on a “constitutionally valid” warrant and were protected by a qualified immunity clause that exempts law enforcement agencies from liability for wrongdoing.
“It was reasonable error to arrest Henry based on the information attached to the warrant and therefore her arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment,” Judge Thomas Ambro of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit wrote in his ruling. New Jersey Monitor.
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The court ruled that Judith Maureen Henry, who was arrested and jailed in a case of mistaken identity, was protected by qualified immunity and could not sue the U.S. marshals who arrested her. (Getty Images)
During his arrest in 2019, Henry repeatedly told deputies he wasn't the person they were after and asked them to match his fingerprints with those of the actual suspect, but no one matched his fingerprints until he was extradited to Pennsylvania 10 days after his arrest, where he was finally released after being held in custody for several days.
“Ms. Henry's allegations – that deputies failed to take seriously her claims of innocence – raise a number of policy questions about the role of the Sheriff's Department after arresting a suspect on a warrant for a crime they are not investigating,” Ambro wrote.
The judge said those questions include how strong a claim of innocence must be before the sheriff will investigate, who should investigate and how thorough the investigation should be. He said a reasonable observer would conclude that the answers to those questions are easy to find and would impose only a “minimal burden” on the sheriff.
Deputies mistook Judith Maureen Henry for a woman of the same name who flunked parole in 1993 after pleading guilty to drug possession in Pennsylvania. (iStock)
But Ambro wrote that these policy questions should be resolved by lawmakers.
He also noted that the sheriffs had no role in Henry's continued detention.
The court also rejected Henry, who is black and Jamaican,'s argument that he was treated this way because of his race, sex, nationality or low economic status.
“We need not accept this conclusion at face value, and she presents no other arguments to support it,” Ambro wrote.
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The appeals panel ruled that the sheriffs were protected by qualified immunity, which shields law enforcement agencies from liability for wrongdoing. (Getty Images)
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A district court judge had denied the sheriffs' request to have Henry's lawsuit dismissed, but Judge Ambro overturned that ruling and ordered the judge to remove the sheriffs from the case.
In addition to the sheriff, Henry's lawsuit names as defendants about 30 other law enforcement officers and government employees in Essex County and across New Jersey and Pennsylvania, charging them with abuse of process, false arrest and imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, failure to train and supervise and conspiracy.
