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