PHOENIX — Javier Lorenzano Nunez, who spent nearly a year in jail after being arrested for a 1998 Phoenix murder, has filed a federal lawsuit against the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office.
The lawsuit alleges he was "arrested without probable cause" and that police and prosecutors "committed gross negligence, false arrest, false imprisonment, negligent infliction of emotional distress, and defamation."
Phoenix police and the Maricopa County Attorney's Office declined to comment on the lawsuit.
Lorenzano Nunez was arrested in 2024 after investigators used facial recognition technology to connect him to the decades-old killing of 28-year-old Sarah Carr. All charges were quietly dismissed less than a year later after forensic evidence, including DNA and fingerprints, excluded him, records show.
Carr was shot and killed on July 9, 1998, just before midnight at a house near 14th Street and McDowell Road following an argument. Witnesses identified a suspect named Gilbert Noel Sanchez Rosado, who fled and was never found.
Two decades later, investigators ran Rosado's old Arizona MVD photo through facial recognition databases operated by the Arizona Department of Public Safety and the FBI.
They received 250 possible matches and zeroed in on Lorenzano Nunez.
Phoenix police made a big deal about the arrest, putting out a press release and producing a special video featuring the victim's son, Garrett Miller, who had become a police officer in Texas. Miller was flown in for the arrest, and Phoenix police used his handcuffs during the bust. He was also interviewed for the city's special video on the case.
Facial recognition appears to be the key evidence used to arrest Lorenzano Nunez, according to the lawsuit and court records obtained by ABC15.
"I represent an individual who never should have been arrested," said Danny Ortega, a civil rights attorney representing Lorenzano Nunez, in an earlier interview. "This was a look-alike case, which is not sufficient for an arrest or to keep a man in jail for a whole year."
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The lawsuit also alleges police ignored a critical lead a decade earlier. In 2007, the Puerto Rico Police Department contacted Phoenix police, informing them they had a man named Gilbert Noel Sanchez Rosado in custody with the same date of birth and social security number as the original suspect, records show.
Puerto Rico also requested a photograph and fingerprints.
"They did not act on it. That was the problem," Ortega said. "They did nothing with the information that was given to them by the Puerto Rican Authorities."
Perhaps most damaging to the case, the lawsuit states Phoenix police knew Lorenzano Nunez's fingerprints did not match years before his arrest.
Lorenzano Nunez was arrested in San Diego in 2011 following a domestic disturbance and eventually deported to Mexico, records show.
From that arrest, Phoenix obtained his fingerprints and a detective submitted them for testing, records show. The results excluded Lorenzano Nunez on 2 latent prints and were inconclusive on 2 others.
The fingerprint analysis was completed in 2017, seven years before Lorenzano Nunez was arrested.
The lawsuit also highlights how the court found Phoenix cold case detective Dominick Roestenberg misled a grand jury to first obtain the indictment against Lorenzano Nunez.
Lorenzano Nunez was living in Mexico when he was arrested.
He was held for months in a Mexican prison awaiting extradition, followed by months more in Maricopa County Jail. Investigators could not find proof he had ever been to Arizona, and his fingerprints did not match the crime scene, according to court motions filed by defense attorneys.
Contact ABC15 Chief Investigator Dave Biscobing at Dave@ABC15.com.
