PASSAGE OF THE DAY: "While it might seem like open-and-shut litigation given the alleged admission of the officers, a recent high-profile Florida case shows that police can avoid liability on civil rights claims over accidental arrests that lead to days-long detainment. The arrestee, David Sosa, was detained for three days by the Martin County Sheriff's Office after deputies mistook him for a suspect of the same name, despite Sosa repeatedly advising them of their error. It was the second time in four years that the sheriff's office had confused him with the other man, according to Sosa. The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Sosa's civil rights claims against the sheriff's office, finding that his detention was misguided but did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, in part because a valid warrant (albeit against a different man) existed."
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STORY: Cuffs first, questions later? Lawsuit claims Miami-Date cops failed to verify ID in mistaken arrest," by Reporter Alex Deluca, published by Miami New Times, on January 24, 2023.
GIST: "Early one morning in May 2019, Sophia King received a seemingly random call from a police officer who claimed King was a witness to a crime in Liberty City, and that police had a few questions for her.
The 32-year-old Miami resident was confused — she hadn’t frequented Liberty City and frankly didn't know what the officer was talking about, she recalls. But the officer advised that she could face arrest or lose custody of her children if she didn't cooperate, so she agreed to meet him at the Miami Gardens Police Department with her toddler and grandmother in tow.
While on her way to the police station later that morning, about a half-dozen Miami-Dade Police Department (MDPD) officers, as well as child protective services, surrounded her car in a chaotic scene. With loaded guns allegedly in hand, police removed King from her vehicle, handcuffed her, and began transporting her to a local jail.
En route to booking, King says, officers suddenly stopped the transport to ask her some basic, ground-level questions to verify who she is: middle initial and birthday.
Upon hearing her answers, they promptly pulled over at a Citgo gas station off 27th Avenue and NW 169th Terrace and showered her with apologies, she says.
In a civil rights lawsuit filed against MDPD in federal court in mid-January (attached below), King claims she was the victim of an easily avoidable case of mistaken identity at the hands of Miami-Dade officers. She says her Fourth Amendment rights were violated when she was wrongfully arrested during the May 17, 2019 incident.
The lawsuit says King had "no involvement with any illegal activity, nor was she a witness to any alleged illegal conduct." She was allegedly mistaken for a woman with a similar name, who was suspected of hitting somebody on the head and stealing their keys three months prior.
"The reality is that this was a misidentification," King's attorney, David B. Andrew, tells New Times. "My client had absolutely nothing to do with the subject of any pending investigation, and yet she was arrested."
MDPD has not responded to New Times' request for comment via email.
Footage from officers' body cameras depicts King in a state of shock and bewilderment while speaking with Miami-Dade police officer Jean Pinero, according to the complaint.
"So, you don’t remember an incident that had to do with some keys and your car, or somebody’s car, and then somebody got hit over the head?” Pinero asks.
“What the hell?" King answers, according to the transcript. "I promise to God I don’t know what you’re talkin’ about."
Officer Pinero then interviewed King's grandmother and described the alleged crime to her, to which she responded "visibly dumbfounded," the lawsuit says.
“No...That’s not her," she told the officer.
The lawsuit claims that police, including a Miami-Dade sergeant, acknowledged the error, apologized, and released her back to her own vehicle. As captured on body-cam footage, King began violently shaking and had a panic attack towards the end of the ordeal, requiring treatment from fire rescue at the scene, the lawsuit alleges.
She includes counts for false imprisonment and assault and battery for being "seized, handcuffed, and placed into a patrol vehicle," actions carried out with the intent to cause "a harmful or offensive contact," she claims. She is seeking unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
King says the mistake could have been prevented if officers had verified basic information in their database before singling her out for arrest.
"It is reasonable to conclude that the correct information identifying the actual alleged assailant or witness was readily available prior to any law enforcement interaction with Ms. King, facts known arguably even at the time the 6:00 a.m. phone call was placed to Ms. King, whereby she was pressured to come to the station," the lawsuit alleges.
While it might seem like open-and-shut litigation given the alleged admission of the officers, a recent high-profile Florida case shows that police can avoid liability on civil rights claims over accidental arrests that lead to days-long detainment.
The arrestee, David Sosa, was detained for three days by the Martin County Sheriff's Office after deputies mistook him for a suspect of the same name, despite Sosa repeatedly advising them of their error. It was the second time in four years that the sheriff's office had confused him with the other man, according to Sosa.
The 11th Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal of Sosa's civil rights claims against the sheriff's office, finding that his detention was misguided but did not rise to the level of a constitutional violation, in part because a valid warrant (albeit against a different man) existed."
The entire story can be read at:
lawsuit-miami-dade-police-failed-to-verify-id-before-mistaken-arrest-16192159
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Read the very curious decision in The Sosa case at:
https://media.ca11.uscourts.gov/opinions/pub/files/202012781.enb.pdf
A taste: Justice Newsom - Agreeing with majority: Case citations removed:
"On April 20, 2018, David Sosa must have felt like he had been dropped into a Kafka novel, for “without having done anything truly wrong, he was arrested.” Franz Kafka, The Trial 3 (Breon Mitchell, trans., 1998). Worse than that, following a routine traffic stop, Sosa was arrested and detained by his hometown sheriff’s deputies for the second time on the same decades-old drug- dealing warrant issued for another David Sosa—one who lived hundreds of miles away in a different state, was a different age, height, and weight, and had conspicuously different tattoo markings. Just as he had the first go round, our Sosa naturally (and repeatedly) told the arresting officers that they had the wrong guy— but to no avail. The deputies detained Sosa for three days over a weekend before they eventually got around to fingerprinting him, recognized their mistake, and released him. What happened to Sosa was, in a word, awful. Without prejudging the issue, I’d be willing to assume that the officers’ con- duct—jailing Sosa for three full days on a warrant issued for some- one else, despite his repeated pleas of innocence and without bothering to do much of anything to verify his identity—might even have been tortious. The question before the Court today, though, is whether their conduct violated the United States Constitution— in particular, whether it infringed Sosa’s so-called “substantive due process” rights. The majority quite correctly concludes that it didn’t. As its opinion straightforwardly explains, the Supreme Court’s decision in Baker v. McCollan, which rejected a due-process challenge to a materially identical “overdetention,” is essentially on point, and our later decision in Cannon v. Macon County, which recognized a substantive-due-process claim based on a detention more than twice as long as Sosa’s, is eminently distinguishable. It really is as simple as that.I therefore concur in the Court’s decision and join its opinion in full."
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SEE BREAKDOWN OF SOME OF THE ON-GOING INTERNATIONAL CASES (OUTSIDE OF THE CONTINENTAL USA) THAT I AM FOLLOWING ON THIS BLOG, AT THE LINK BELOW: HL:
https://www.blogger.com/blog/post/edit/120008354894645705/4704913685758792985
FINAL WORD: (Applicable to all of our wrongful conviction cases): "Whenever there is a wrongful conviction, it exposes errors in our criminal legal system, and we hope that this case — and lessons from it — can prevent future injustices."
Lawyer Radha Natarajan:
Executive Director: New England Innocence Project;
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Christina Swarns: Executive Director: The Innocence Project;
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