Judges toss false-arrest claims against federal marshals in mistaken-identity case

A federal appeals court ruled that U.S. Marshals can't be held liable for arresting the wrong person on a 2019 warrant in a mistaken-identity case. (Photo by New Jersey Monitor)

A New Jersey woman who spent two weeks in jail for someone else’s decades-old parole violation has lost her bid to hold the federal marshals who arrested her accountable.

A three-judge appellate panel ruled Thursday that the marshals who hauled Judith Maureen Henry to the Essex County Correctional Facility in 2019 acted on a “constitutionally valid” warrant and were entitled to qualified immunity, a legal protection that insulates law enforcement officers from liability.

“Their arrest of Henry relying on information attached to the warrant was a reasonable mistake, and therefore her arrest did not violate the Fourth Amendment,” wrote Judge Thomas Ambro of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals.

Henry shared the same name as a woman who had pled guilty to drug possession and then skipped parole in Pennsylvania in 1993, according to the ruling. In 2019, the director of the Pennsylvania Interstate Parole Services issued a warrant for the parole absconder’s arrest for violating parole 26 years earlier. The warrant, though, identified Henry as the marshals’ target, the ruling says.

Henry repeatedly told marshals they had the wrong person and asked officers to compare her fingerprints to the absconder’s, but no one did that until she was transferred to Pennsylvania 10 days after her arrest, according to the ruling. It took a few more days for her to be released.

“Henry’s complaint — that the Marshals failed to take her claims of innocence seriously — raises a host of policy questions about the role of the Marshals Service after they apprehend a suspect on a warrant for a crime they did not investigate,” Ambro wrote.

That includes questions about how strong a claim of innocence must be before a marshal investigates, who should investigate, and how in-depth of an investigation they should do, he added.

“A reasonable observer could conclude the answers are not hard to find and would impose minimal burdens on the Marshals,” he conceded.

Still, he noted, those are policy questions better left to lawmakers. The marshals weren’t involved in Henry’s continued detention, he added.

He also rejected Henry’s claim that her treatment resulted from her race, sex, national origin, and “lower economic status.” Henry is Black and from Jamaica, court paperwork shows.

“We need not accept this bare conclusion, and she offers no other allegations to support it,” Ambro wrote.

A district judge had refused the marshals’ request to dismiss Henry’s claims against them. Ambro reversed that ruling and ordered the judge to drop the marshals from the suit.

Besides the marshals, Henry’s lawsuit names Essex County and about 30 named law enforcement officers and government officials in New Jersey and Pennsylvania as defendants. Henry accused them of abuse of process, false arrest and imprisonment, intentional infliction of emotional distress, failures to train and supervise, and conspiracy.

Henry’s attorneys did not respond Friday to a request for comment.

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