Officer, you've got the wrong person

Three police cars pulled into Christina FourHorn's front yard one afternoon just before she was supposed to pick up her daughter at school. The officers had a warrant for her arrest.

"What do you mean robbery?" FourHorn remembers asking the officers. Her only brushes with the law had been a few speeding tickets.

She was locked up in a Colorado jail. They took her clothes and other belongings and handed her an oversize black-and-white striped uniform. She protested for five days, telling jailers the arrest was a mistake. Finally, her husband borrowed enough money to bail her out.

"They wouldn't tell me the details," she said.

Later, it became clear that FourHorn was right, that Denver policehad arrested the wrong woman. Police were searching for Christin Fourhorn, who lived in Oklahoma.

Their names were similar, and Christina FourHorn, a mother with no criminal record living in Sterling, Colorado, had been caught in the mix-up.

FourHorn went public about her case more than two years ago, filing a lawsuit that alleged the arrest violated her constitutional rights. The Fourth Amendment protects citizens from arrest without probable cause.

The problem of mistaken arrests continues, said attorneys with theAmerican Civil Liberties Union of Colorado. The group, which represented FourHorn, calls Denver's police work "recklessly sloppy." An ACLU mistaken identity lawsuit on behalf of four other people is pending against Colorado police agencies.

A mistaken identity arrest occurs almost every day, said policing experts and officials at the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers. But most people taken into custody are released shortly after the mistake is realized.

Since the FourHorn case, the ACLU found at least 237 cases in Colorado in which police may have arrested the wrong person. The figure is likely a small sample since police often release those wrongfully arrested before the first court appearance, the ACLU said.

"We are trying to demonstrate that this is a widespread practice," said Mark Silverstein, an ACLU attorney who filed FourHorn's suit in 2008. FourHorn's case was settled, and the terms remain confidential