Black Woman Wrongfully Jailed Over Mistaken Identity Can't Sue, Court Says

A New Jersey woman who was wrongly arrested and jailed in a case of mistaken identity can't sue the U.S. marshals who detained her, a court ruled per Fox News .

Judith Maureen Henry was arrested in 2019 by marshals who mistakenly believed she was another woman with the same name who had pleaded guilty to drug possession and skipped her parole in Pennsylvania in 1993. During her arrest, Henry repeatedly told marshals that she wasn't the person they were looking for and requested authorities compare her fingerprints to the offender. Marshals failed to act on Henry's claims and she was booked into the Essex County Correctional Facility in Newark.

Authorities didn't compare Henry's fingerprints until 10 days after her arrest when she was transferred to Pennsylvania. The woman remained in custody for another few days before she was released.

Henry had filed a lawsuit against the marshals in 2020 over their mistake. However, a three-judge appellate panel recently ruled the marshals arrested Henry on a "constitutionally valid" warrant and were protected by qualified immunity.

"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," Judge Thomas Ambro of the U.S. Third Circuit Court of Appeals wrote in the ruling.

"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 said.

However, the judge noted that those policy questions are up to lawmakers to address.

The court also shut down the notion that Henry was wrongly arrested due to her race or socioeconomic status.

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

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