Wrong woman was strip searched 3 times, held in AZ cell overnight, lawsuit says
A woman was working in her yard when six agents with the U.S. Marshals Service arrived at her Arizona home in unmarked cars and got out, pointing long rifles at her before apprehending her, she said at a news conference, detailing how agents mistook her as a fugitive.
Penny McCarthy, then 66, was driven to the U.S. Marshals Office in Phoenix, where she insisted to agents misidentifying her as “Carole Rozak” that she wasn’t the woman they sought to apprehend on a decades-old warrant from Oklahoma, according to a federal lawsuit McCarthy filed June 10 over her false arrest in March 2024.
McCarthy had photos, fingerprints and samples of her DNA taken by officers who had her strip searched and put on a bus to a federal detention center in Florence, about a 65-mile drive southeast from Phoenix, a complaint filed June 9 says.
Over the course of her more than 24 hours of wrongful detention, McCarthy was strip searched three times, according to the filing.
In recalling the initial strip search at a June 10 news conference, McCarthy began to cry, describing how she is a survivor of domestic child abuse, including an incident in which she said her and her younger sister’s clothes were “ripped” off.
“I have to be strip searched by one woman for something I didn’t do, and then I’m told I’m going to be detained,” McCarthy said.
After she was booked at the federal facility, she was strip searched two more times and held in a “cold cell” overnight before her initial court appearance in Phoenix as “Carole Rozak,” according to the complaint.
At the hearing, a federal judge released McCarthy, who was due back in court for an identity hearing, the complaint says.
“Eventually, the government confirmed that Penny’s fingerprints and DNA do not match Rozak’s and ended the proceedings,” McCarthy’s attorneys wrote in the filing.
McCarthy, a grandmother who has since left Arizona, said she had only lived in Phoenix for about 10 months when she was confronted by the U.S. Marshals Service.
Now, she’s suing the six agents accused of wrongly detaining her, two U.S. Marshals Service employees she encountered at the agency’s Phoenix office and additional agency employees accused of misidentifying her.
“If I did not have the family I have or had a great public defender, I could still be in a facility being known as somebody I’m not,” McCarthy said at the news conference. “Nobody should be this far above the law.”
In a statement shared with McClatchy News on June 10 by Colleen Grayman, a public information officer for the U.S. Marshals Service in Arizona, the agency said: “The US Marshals Service acknowledges that Ms. Penny McCarthy was mistakenly arrested.”
The agency added that it “does not comment on personnel matters or administrative investigations” and said “Notwithstanding the above, we regret any inconvenience caused to Ms. McCarthy by her arrest and remain committed to lessening similar incidents in the future.”
The Institute for Justice, a nonprofit law firm specializing in cases involving alleged abuses of power, is representing McCarthy.
Before connecting with the firm, McCarthy said other attorneys she spoke with told her the U.S. Marshals Service employees accused of falsely arresting her would “get away with it.”
“Every one of them was like, nope, they have qualified immunity,” McCarthy recalled of the feedback she received.
“Do I live in 1940s Germany or America? Because this is crazy,” she said.
Justice Department investigation
The U.S. Marshals Service previously told KNXV-TV that McCarthy was arrested by mistake.
The Justice Department’s Office of Inspector General has been investigating the circumstances of her arrest, the TV station reported.
In response to an inquiry from McClatchy News on June 10, the Justice Department declined to comment or confirm whether the agency is investigating.
Matthew Nies, a public affairs specialist for the agency, said via email that “Justice Department policy is generally to neither confirm nor deny the existence of an investigation.”
When U.S. Marshals agents first showed up to McCarthy’s home in Phoenix, the lawsuit says they threatened to “‘hit’ her if she kept looking at them.”
The Institute for Justice said in a June 10 news release that the body camera footage of her arrest shows McCarthy’s shock upon being confronted by agents. The law firm published the footage online.
McCarthy is suing U.S. Marshals Service employees on 10 causes of action, including assault, battery, false arrest and violations of her constitutional rights, the complaint shows.
“The officers’ misidentifying Penny was inexcusable and violated state and federal law,” Paul Avelar, a senior attorney with the Institute for Justice, said in the news release.
“To make matters worse, even if Penny had been the fugitive they were looking for, the officers’ over-the-top display of force was uncalled for, given that the fugitive was wanted only for failing to check in with a probation officer after being released from prison twenty-five years ago for nonviolent crimes,” Avelar said.
McCarthy’s civil rights lawsuit seeks an unspecified amount in nominal, compensatory and punitive damages.
“I’m still afraid that one day I will be pulled over and again mistaken for a criminal,” McCarthy said in the news release. “I’m suing because I don’t want this to happen to anyone else.”
“Unless someone is held responsible, someone else will go through this same nightmare,” she added.
This story was originally published June 10, 2025 at 5:21 PM with the headline "Wrong woman was strip searched 3 times, held in AZ cell overnight, lawsuit says."
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