One minute, 66-year-old Penny McCarthy was doing yardwork at her home in Phoenix, Arizona. Next, she found herself facing armed government agents pointing their weapons at her in what would become a devastating example of mistaken identity.
What started as a normal day in March 2024 quickly turned into an ordeal marked by incompetence and dishonesty.
Six plainclothes US Marshals arrived at McCarthy’s home in three unmarked white vehicles. “They showed up and pointed rifles at me … and told me to turn my back to them, not look at them,” she told Townhall.
“Turn away or you’re gonna get hit!” one of the officers can be heard saying on the bodycam footage.
One of the officers instructed her to put her hands up before handcuffing her on her front yard. They also shackled her legs. “I asked them repeatedly if they knew who I was,” McCarthy recalled. “They said they had a warrant for my arrest.”
It wasn’t until the officers placed McCarthy in the back of a van that they told her that they believed she was Carola Ann Rozak, a fugitive wanted for a parole violation. “I’m like, ‘That’s not me,” McCarthy said. “They said, ‘Penny McCarthy.’ I said, ‘Yes, but I’ve never been Carol Ann Rozak.”
McCarthy asked the officers to allow her to retrieve her identification from inside her home. She had a REAL ID issued by the state of Colorado. The officers refused her request. In fact, they would not even let her lock her door or secure her dog. She was prohibited from taking her phone or purse.
The officers loaded her into an unmarked vehicle and drove her to a loading dock behind a grocery store. “My very first thought was I was just compliant in a kidnapping, my kidnapping, and I am going to die,” she told Townhall. “I thought I was going to die behind the grocery store.”
Upon arriving at the US Marshals Office in Phoenix, McCarthy was fingerprinted, photographed, and swabbed for DNA. Later, an officer informed her that her prints and a tattoo matched Rozak’s. McCarthy protested, saying that it was impossible. “That man told me that he got a hit on my fingerprints. He also told me he got a hit on my tattoo, which is a bald-faced lie,” she said. “My tattoo, I designed myself. Nobody else has my tattoo, so it’s a lie.”
Nevertheless, the officers subjected McCarthy to a strip search before transferring her to a federal detention facility in Florence, Arizona. At no point did they allow McCarthy to prove she was not the suspect they were looking for.
After arriving in Florence, the officers strip-searched her again in a room full of other detainees. She was placed in a cold holding cell outfitted with a leaky toilet. "They never let me make a phone call. They never gave me any Miranda rights. They never wanted to hear a single thing I had to say. The proof that I was me," McCarthy said.
It was only after she persuaded a supervisor to allow her to call her sister that anyone in her family knew she had been taken. The officers strip-searched her for a third time just before returning her to Phoenix for a court hearing. McCarthy’s public defender told the court that the authorities had arrested the wrong person. However, the prosecution requested additional time to verify her identity.
After having been in federal custody for about 27 hours, they finally released her. Still, they required her to check in weekly with her court-appointed lawyer. "It was my understanding that I was still considered a Carol Ann Rosack, and I had to prove I was Penny McCarthy in court, up until they dropped those charges," she said.
It was later revealed that the US Marshals had identified McCarthy as Rozak based on a 25-year-old warrant for Rozak and a printout of McCarthy’s Facebook profile. Her maiden name, Burns, was similar to one of Rozak’s aliases, Penny Leigh Burns.
Yet, despite obvious differences in age, eye color, social security numbers, and no shared criminal history, the officers relied on this insufficient information to justify the arrest.
The ordeal has taken a significant toll on McCarthy’s mental health. "I have horrible PTSD. My dog has PTSD. I can't even get her groomed anymore. She's got PTSD so bad," McCarthy said. "I don't know if my house was locked or if the door was full shut. I don't know if they lived inside my house. I know nothing."
McCarthy is now suing the US government and individual federal officers with the help of the Institute for Justice (IJ), a public interest law firm. The lawsuit, filed earlier this month, alleges that the authorities violated her Fourth and Fifth Amendment rights.
The marshals arrested McCarthy without a warrant, ignored clear signs that she was not the suspect, and subjected her to degrading treatment based on tenuous evidence. The lawsuit alleges assault, battery, trespass, false imprisonment, negligence, and malicious prosecution. The legal action also challenges protections provided by the Westfall Act, which gives a measure of immunity from lawsuits to government employees.
IJ attorney Paul Avelar, who is representing McCarthy, characterized the lawsuit as a direct challenge to systemic failures in how federal agents avoid accountability.
"Penny’s case is, sadly, an exemplar of some things that we've been seeing nationally," Avelar told Townhall. "We knew that Penny had not only a great case on her assault and merits, but that there was an opportunity here for us to litigate to ensure that people can stand up for their own rights in court."
He suggested that “To the extent the Westfall Act is cutting off all liability against anyone, then that’s the problem.”
When asked why the officers would tell McCarthy that her fingerprints, DNA, and tattoo matched Rozak’s, he replied, “It’s clearly wrong at the time. They coudl have been flat out lies. They could have had someone who was wholly unqualified to do these things. We just don’t know yet.”
Even more galling is that McCarthy has not received so much as an apology from the US Marshals Service. “Penny has never heard from the Marshal's office,” Avelar said. “It was all a giant black box.”
There is no indication that any of the officers involved faced disciplinary action for the mishap.
McCarthy says she is not only seeking personal vindication with the lawsuit. “I’m hoping that this can’t happen to another person,” she said.