During a recent appearance on NBC’s Tonight Show with Jimmy Fallon, Grammy-award winning artist, Olivia Rodrigo, opened up about a harrowing encounter when U.S. law enforcement threatened to jail Rodrigo after mistaking her for a criminal. The experience left Rodrigo shaken, and it highlights a horrifying nightmare many Americans have been forced to endure.
Rodrigo’s run in with police happened while she was traveling from Canada to the U.S. during her Guts World Tour. While attempting to cross the border, border agents pulled Rodrigo into a room and began questioning her—threatening to arrest her if she lied to them, the singer recalled. Roughly 30 minutes into the interrogation, officers asked Rodrigo to clarify her name. After she did, officers realized they had mistaken Rodrigo for an Olivia Rodriguez, a criminal who allegedly resembled the musician.
In some cases of mistaken identity, police catch their mistake before someone ends up behind bars, like in Rodrigo’s case. However, in other cases, people aren’t as fortunate.
Jennifer Heath Box spent more than three days in jail after South Florida police mistook her for a completely different woman. The ordeal began on Christmas Eve in 2022. Jennifer, her husband, brother, and sister-in-law were returning from a cruise, and Jennifer was headed back to Texas so Jennifer could spend Christmas with her son before he deployed with the United States Marines. As Jennifer scanned her driver’s license to disembark from the ship, she was surrounded by deputies with the Broward County Sheriff’s Office. Deputies told Jennifer there was a warrant for her arrest related to a charge of “endangering a child” under 15 (all three of Jennifer’s children are grown adults).
The warrant was actually for Jennifer Delcarmen Heath. The two ladies had completely different driver’s license numbers, social security numbers, addresses, and looked nothing alike. Worse yet, even when booking personnel at the Broward County Jail noted that there were no outstanding warrants for Jennifer, deputies still insisted they had the right person and proceeded to book her into jail. Bad idea, right?
It took more than 75 hours to rectify the mistake and get Jennifer released. In that time—because of Broward County Sheriff Department’s lazy policing—Jennifer was forced to endure brutal mistreatment from guards, freezing conditions in her cell, and lost out on the opportunity to see her son before he left the country.
The Constitution protects Americans from unreasonable seizures, which includes mistaken arrests and wrongful detentions. It also provides for the constitutional right to due process. That’s why Jennifer teamed up with the Institute for Justice (IJ) to hold Broward County officials accountable. Whether you’re a megastar, or a mother of three, nobody should have to suffer in jail because officers don’t take the time to ensure they’re detaining and/or arresting the right person.
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The Institute for Justice is a nonprofit, nonpartisan, public interest law firm. Our mission is to end widespread abuses of government power and secure the constitutional rights that allow all Americans to pursue their dreams. IJ has represented individuals who faced retaliatory code enforcement for public comments they made, were arrested for posting jokes about their local police departments on social media, or had baseless lawsuits filed against them because of their criticisms of government officials. If you feel the government has abused your constitutional rights, tell us about your case. Visit https://ijstaging.wpengine.com/report-abuse/.
About the Institute for Justice
Through strategic litigation, training, communication, activism, legislative outreach and research, the Institute for Justice advances a rule of law under which individuals can control their destinies as free and responsible members of society. IJ litigates to secure economic liberty, educational choice, private property rights, freedom of speech and other vital individual liberties, and to restore constitutional limits on the power of government.