By Steve Neavling
A woman who says she was wrongfully arrested and repeatedly strip-searched after U.S. Marshals mistook her for a fugitive has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit.
Penny McCarthy, 66 at the time of her arrest, was gardening outside her Phoenix home in March 2024 when six U.S. Marshals arrived in unmarked vehicles and pointed rifles at her, according to the lawsuit filed June 10, The Sacramento Bee reports. The agents believed she was Carole Rozak, a woman wanted on a decades-old warrant from Oklahoma.
McCarthy says she was arrested at gunpoint, fingerprinted, photographed, and subjected to three strip searches, including one at a federal detention center in Florence, Ariz., where she was held overnight in a cold cell. She was booked under the wrong name and appeared before a judge before officials eventually confirmed her identity through fingerprints and DNA and dropped the case.
A survivor of childhood abuse, McCarthy said the strip searches retraumatized her.
“Nobody should be this far above the law,” she said at a press conference.
Represented by the nonprofit Institute for Justice, McCarthy is suing the Marshals Service and several agents for false arrest, assault, and constitutional violations. The agency has acknowledged the arrest was a mistake, and the Justice Department’s inspector general is reportedly investigating, though the department declined to confirm.
“I’m suing because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else,” McCarthy said.
