FBI SWAT team raided the wrong house. Can family sue? Supreme Court will decide.
The lead FBI agent blamed his GPS device for sending the SWAT team to the wrong address.
WASHINGTON − An FBI SWAT team smashed in the front door of an Atlanta family’s home in the pre-dawn hours of an October morning in 2017, detonated a flashbang grenade and pointed guns at the adults before realizing they had raided the wrong house.
The agent in charge blamed his GPS device for sending the team to a house 436 feet from the home of the violent gang member they were trying to arrest.
The family sued for compensation for the trauma they experienced, but an appeals court said they couldn’t go after the government.
The Supreme Court on Monday agreed to review that decision.
Lawyers for the family said the fundamental issue is whether Congress created a way for people to seek redress for a wrong-house raid or other negligent or wrongful acts by federal law enforcement.
They argue that’s exactly what lawmakers did in 1974 in response to two raids on the wrong homes. Congress amended the Federal Tort Claims Act to specify that claims can be made against the government in various situations including false arrest and abuse of process.
“Whatever else the provision encompasses, there is no question that wrong-house raids lie at its core,” a bipartisan group of lawmakers wrote in a brief supporting the family’s appeal.
But the Atlanta-based 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals said the Federal Tort Claims Act doesn’t apply if the disputed action by the law enforcement officer involved an element of judgment, even if the officer abused his discretion.
The court also said that the supremacy clause − the section of the Constitution that makes the federal government “the supreme Law of the Land” – blocks the suit because the mistakes made were reasonable in the “rapidly-changing and dangerous situation of executing a high-risk warrant at night.”
The lead agent had visited the neighborhood before the raid and documented features he thought were unique to the house. But both homes were split-levels on a corner lot and had a stoop leading to the front door with windows on either side, a large tree in the yard and a side-entry garage on a separate street.
When the SWAT team entered the wrong home, residents Curtrina Martin and Hilliard Toi Cliatt thought they were being burglarized and hid in a bedroom closet where Cliatt kept a shotgun for protection, according to filings. The SWAT team dragged Cliatt out of the closet and handcuffed him.
Martin said she pleaded with the officers to let her go to her seven-year-old son who was hiding under his bed covers in another room.
When the team realized they had the wrong address, they released Cliatt and left. After arresting the target, the lead agent returned to apologize to Martin and Cliatt, documented the property damage and provided his supervisor’s contact information.
But the family said the FBI refused to cover costs from the trauma they inflicted, including lost wages and “years of therapy necessary to come to terms with the raid.”
“The FBI can’t undo the damage it caused by raiding the wrong house, but the government needs to pay for its mistake,” said Dylan Moore, an attorney at the Institute for Justice, which is representing the family. “Congress created the FTCA to give people like Trina, Gabe, and Toi a remedy. Courts should not do backflips to read that remedy out of existence.”
The case, Martin v. U.S., is expected to be argued this spring with a decision by summer.
(This story was updated to fix a typo.)