A single photograph can freeze a moment in time. In this case, ABC15 Investigator Dave Biscobing says it may have frozen the wrong man into a murder story that wasn’t his – until the whole thing collapsed, quietly, almost as if officials wanted it to fade without anyone noticing.
Biscobing reports that Javier Lorenzano-Nunez, a Mexican national, spent close to a year behind bars after Phoenix police used facial recognition to tie him to a 1998 murder. Then, less than a year later, the charges were dismissed, with forensic evidence excluding him.
Now, Biscobing says Lorenzano-Nunez has hired civil rights attorney Danny Ortega, and the message to Phoenix and Maricopa County is blunt: settle for $3 million, or prepare for a lawsuit.
The Cold Case And The Sudden Arrest
Biscobing frames the story around a sharp contrast – Phoenix police publicly celebrating an arrest, then later watching the case unravel.
The murder at the center of it happened long before facial recognition was even part of daily life. Biscobing recounts that it was July 9, 1998, just before midnight, when 28-year-old Sarah Carr was shot and killed at a house near 14th Street and McDowell Road after an argument.
Back then, witnesses identified a suspect they called “Gilbert,” and police connected that name to Gilbert Noel Sanchez Rosado, who allegedly fled and was never found.
For years, it sat in the cold-case pile. A painful file. A name and a face that never got put in handcuffs.
Then, decades later, Biscobing says investigators took Rosado’s old Arizona MVD photo and ran it through facial recognition databases operated by Arizona’s Department of Public Safety and the FBI.
That search, according to Biscobing’s reporting, generated about 250 possible matches. Police narrowed it down, and the one they “zeroed in” on was not the original suspect at all – it was a 2011 photo of Javier Lorenzano-Nunez.
Biscobing says that’s how a man living in Tijuana became a target in a Phoenix homicide from the late 1990s.
Ortega told ABC15, “I represent an individual who never should have been arrested,” and he described it as a “look-alike case,” not the kind of evidence that should put someone in a cell for months.
Biscobing reports Lorenzano-Nunez was arrested at his home in Tijuana, jailed in Mexico, then extradited to Arizona.
That’s not a small disruption. That is the state reaching across a border, taking a person out of his life, and placing him in a system that moves slow and punishes hard, even before a trial ever begins.
The Video, The Celebration, And The Quiet Collapse
One detail Biscobing highlights feels important because it goes to motive and image, not just evidence.
He says Phoenix “made a huge deal” about the arrest, including a special video about the case. In the story, Biscobing plays audio from an official voice bragging about the amount of work done – “a tremendous amount of work” put into the investigation by the detective, original investigators, the U.S. Marshal Service, and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
That kind of messaging is designed to convince the public the system did something smart and heroic.
But Biscobing’s reporting points out what happened next: less than a year later, the case fell apart and charges were dismissed.
Not in a loud press conference. Not with a clear public apology. Biscobing describes it as quiet – charges “quietly dismissed” – after the arrest had been made into a public moment.
That difference matters because it’s how institutions protect themselves. They celebrate loudly when they think they’ve won, and they whisper when the facts turn against them.
Biscobing also notes the Phoenix Police Department and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office declined to comment on Ortega’s new notice of claim.
And while agencies have every right to stay quiet while legal claims are pending, it also leaves the public with one side telling the story in detail and the other side saying nothing at all.
In a case like this, silence doesn’t feel neutral. It feels like waiting for the outrage to cool off.
“Non-Scientific” Technology And A Questionable Jump
Ortega’s argument, as Biscobing lays it out, is that facial recognition appears to have been the backbone of the arrest, possibly the only real backbone.
Biscobing quotes Ortega saying it’s obvious “just from looking at the photos” that police assumed the two images were the same person.
Ortega pushes it further by pointing to the warning police allegedly received from DPS: image comparisons are “non-scientific,” intended for lead purposes only, and “should not be used as the sole basis for any decision.”
That warning is key. Facial recognition can be a tool, but even supporters of the tech often admit it is not a final answer. It’s a suggestion. A starting point. A thing you check, not a thing you bet someone’s freedom on.
Biscobing’s report paints a picture where investigators didn’t treat it like a starting point. They treated it like a conclusion.
And Ortega’s sharpest line – one Biscobing includes because it captures the anger behind the lawsuit threat – is this: “Seems to me here we’re looking at racial recognition instead of facial recognition.”
That’s not just a soundbite. It’s an accusation that the system saw a resemblance, saw a foreign national, and pushed forward because it was convenient.
If that’s true, it’s not just a technical failure. It’s a moral one.
The Lead Phoenix Allegedly Ignored
Biscobing doesn’t let the story stay in the tech lane. He moves to what Ortega’s notice of claim alleges about old investigative leads that weren’t followed.
According to Biscobing, the claim includes a striking point: in September 2007, Phoenix PD was contacted by the Puerto Rico Police Department, which said they had a person named Gilbert Noel Sanchez Rosado in custody.
Not just a similar name – Biscobing reports it was the same date of birth and Social Security number as the original suspect.
Puerto Rico police even requested a photograph and fingerprints to make the match, according to Biscobing.
Ortega told ABC15 a simple, damaging sentence: Phoenix “did not act on it.” He said, “They did nothing with the information that was given to them.”
If that’s accurate, it raises a question that should make any person uneasy: how does a major lead like that get ignored, and then years later the department leans on facial recognition to arrest someone else entirely?
That’s not just “missing a step.” That’s building a new case while an old door was left wide open.
Biscobing also notes that investigators struggled to find ties between Lorenzano-Nunez and Arizona, which is a basic common-sense check in a cold case like this. You don’t need to be a detective to ask, “Was this person even here?”
Fingerprints That Didn’t Match – Years Before The Arrest
The most explosive piece of Biscobing’s report is the fingerprint timeline.
He says the notice of claim alleges Phoenix police knew Lorenzano-Nunez’s fingerprints didn’t match long before arresting him.
Biscobing explains that Lorenzano-Nunez was arrested in San Diego in 2011 and deported, and Phoenix obtained his fingerprints from that arrest. A detective personally submitted the prints for testing.
The results, Biscobing reports, excluded Lorenzano-Nunez on two latent prints and were inconclusive on two others.
Then comes the date that makes your stomach drop: the fingerprint lab report was from 2017.
That means, as Biscobing puts it, seven years before Lorenzano-Nunez was arrested in 2024, there was already a report in the file showing “identifications none, exclusions two.”
Ortega summarized what that means in plain language, according to Biscobing: “They had evidence that it wasn’t my client.”
If you accept that timeline as true, it becomes harder to chalk this up to an honest mistake. Because honest mistakes get corrected when the hard evidence says “no.”
This looks more like a case where the momentum mattered more than the mismatch.
And it shows a danger people keep warning about with facial recognition: once an algorithm points at someone, humans often start building a story around that choice, even when other evidence starts waving red flags.
The Pressure To “Solve” And The Role Of A Police Connection
Biscobing includes another detail that adds to the suspicion of optics driving decisions: the victim’s son.
He reports the son of Sarah Carr became a police officer in Texas. Phoenix flew him in for the arrest, used his handcuffs during the bust, and interviewed him for that “special video” announcing the arrest.
That sounds symbolic, almost cinematic, like something you’d do when you’re trying to show the public a clean ending to a long, painful case.
Ortega told Biscobing he thinks Phoenix wanted to show the case as “being solved,” and he raised a question worth asking: was there a “police connection” that made this arrest feel even more important to the department?
Biscobing doesn’t claim he has proof of motive beyond what’s in the claim, but the way he lays the facts out makes it hard not to wonder if somebody got emotionally invested in being the detective who closed the file, and then refused to let go.
That’s the risk with cold cases. They sit for so long that when an answer finally appears – especially a technological answer – it can feel like destiny.
But destiny doesn’t hold up in court. Evidence does.
The Price Of A Year Behind Bars
Biscobing makes sure viewers don’t lose sight of the human cost. This wasn’t a brief mix-up at a traffic stop. This was a year of a person’s life taken.
Ortega told ABC15 that Lorenzano-Nunez was arrested in Tijuana, held in Mexican prison, then moved into the Maricopa County Jail for about a year.
“They had an innocent man in jail,” Ortega said, according to Biscobing.
Think about what that means beyond the walls. A job lost. A reputation stained. A family forced to live with the idea that the system can grab you, label you, and keep you.
Even after charges are dismissed, people don’t just return to normal. There’s always a shadow of “What if,” always a record trail, always someone who heard the headline but never heard the correction.
And in this story, Biscobing points out the “big deal” was public, while the dismissal was quiet. That imbalance is exactly how wrongful cases keep doing damage long after the courtroom is done.
Where The Case Goes Next
Biscobing says Ortega has now filed the notice of claim against the City of Phoenix and the Maricopa County Attorney’s Office.
The allegations listed are serious: gross negligence, false arrest, false imprisonment, negligent infliction of emotional distress, defamation, and constitutional violations.
Biscobing also notes police and prosecutors declined comment, while in past statements both agencies have stood by their handling of the case.
Unless a settlement happens, the next step is a lawsuit, and Ortega’s framing suggests he wants to force the issue into civil court where the paper trail becomes public and decisions get questioned under oath.
In a way, this is exactly the kind of case that will shape how the public thinks about facial recognition in policing.
Not because the tech exists – everyone knows that now – but because of how easily it can become a shortcut, and how brutal the consequences are when that shortcut points to the wrong person.
If Biscobing’s reporting is accurate, this case isn’t just about one wrong arrest. It’s about a system that may have been warned not to rely on “non-scientific” image matching, may have had fingerprint exclusions sitting in the file, and still went forward anyway.
And if that’s what happened here, it’s hard to call it a glitch.
It starts to look like a choice.
A former park ranger and wildlife conservationist, Lisa’s passion for survival started with her deep connection to nature. Raised on a small farm in northern Wisconsin, she learned how to grow her own food, raise livestock, and live off the land. Lisa is our dedicated Second Amendment news writer and also focuses on homesteading, natural remedies, and survival strategies. Lisa aims to help others live more sustainably and prepare for the unexpected.
