A New Jersey woman served two weeks in prison for violating someone else's parole, but a federal appeals court ruled that those responsible for her wrongful imprisonment are constitutionally protected from liability.
Judith Maureen Henry, from New Jersey, shares a name with another woman who flunked parole after pleading guilty to drug possession in Pennsylvania in the 1990s. In 2019, this stranger's past caught up with Henry, and she was incarcerated in Essex County Jail in Newark.
Henry has tried to sue the U.S. marshals involved, but can't do so because the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution gives him qualified immunity – a legal protection that shields law enforcement officers from liability.
“The court's decision to arrest Henry in reliance on the information attached to the warrant was reasonable error, and therefore her arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment,” Judge Thomas Ambro of the U.S. 3rd Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in his ruling. Obtained by the New Jersey Monitor.
Henry repeatedly told deputies that she was not the person they were looking for and asked them to match her fingerprints with those of the real suspect.
No one tested Henry during the two weeks he was incarcerated in Newark and transported to Pennsylvania.
Henry's now-dismissed lawsuit named about 30 police and government officials in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as defendants, but did not include the sheriff involved in her arrest.
She charged them all with abuse of process, false arrest and imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, failure to train and supervise, and conspiracy.
Ms Henry, a black Jamaican woman, tried to argue that prejudice against her race and low economic status led to her arrest, a claim that Mr Ambro also denied.
“We are not required to accept this mere conclusion, and she presents no other arguments to support it,” Ambro wrote.
