Groggy and disoriented, Trina Martin awoke to the barrage of a half-dozen men smashing through the front door of her split-level Atlanta home. The clamor jolted her drowsy partner Toi Cliatt, who was lying on the bed. He jumped to his feet.
As Martin scrambled to protect her 7-year-old son in his room across the hall, Cliatt pulled her instead into a walk-in closet where he stored a shotgun to defend against intruders.
Then a flashbang grenade detonated in a burst of white in a front room. Martin’s son Gabe, hiding alone under a blanket, said the explosion left his ears ringing and smelled like burning batteries.
“It was just monstrous, a really loud noise,” Martin told USA TODAY of the battering ram. “Whoever came into our home, they came for a mission. I felt like that mission was to kill us.”
She was mistaken, but so were the intruders.
The armed men storming Martin’s home were FBI agents searching for a gang suspect in the wrong house at 4 a.m. on Oct. 18, 2017. The correct beige split-level house the FBI agents were targeting was 436 feet down the street.
The mistaken search is now the subject of a Supreme Court case over whether the family can sue the FBI for compensation, with oral arguments scheduled for April 29.
Courts shouldn’t ‘second-guess’ law enforcement: government lawyers
Justice Department lawyers have argued that the FBI agents are immune from the lawsuit because, regardless of whether they erred about the address, the search was part of their official duties.
If the Supreme Court sides with the government, and rules against the family being able to sue, legal experts say it could foreclose any lawsuits against federal law enforcement officers.
FBI agents described their meticulous planning to execute the search warrant for a violent suspected gang member went awry as they barged into Martin’s house instead.
FBI Special Agents Lawrence Guerra and Gregory Donovan took pictures of the suspect’s house during daylight hours before the search: a beige, split-level home on a corner lot with a driveway and garage facing a separate street from the front door. Guerra wrote tactical notes about how to conduct the search, attended an operational briefing and distributed pictures of the suspect and the house.
Guerra and FBI Special Agent Michael Lemoine returned to the neighborhood in the predawn darkness the morning of the search with a personal GPS device that directed them to a similar-looking house – the wrong house – where a black Camaro parked outside served as a marker for the search team.
Government lawyers said FBI agents weighed public safety, resources and accuracy of their information before executing the warrant and argued that “‘judicial second-guessing’ is not appropriate,” even if law enforcement officials admit they made a mistake.
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What is the Federal Tort Claims Act?
The family sued the FBI agents in September 2019 for compensation under the Federal Tort Claims Act, saying the mistaken search has left them shaken, and they’re still suffering the consequences. The lawsuit accuses the agency of negligence, emotional distress, trespass, false imprisonment and assault and battery.
Congress amended the tort law in 1974 to allow lawsuits against federal law enforcement authorities. The change came after two wrong-house raids in southern Illinois the previous year.
The statute removes sovereign immunity from lawsuits for “assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process or malicious prosecution” based on “acts or omissions of investigative or law enforcement officers of the United States Government.”
But even if the Supreme Court overturns the appeals court and sides with the family, they would still have to prove they were harmed at a trial.
“We’re fighting just to get our foot in the front door of the court,” Patrick Jaicomo, a lawyer from the Institute for Justice representing the family, told USA TODAY. “It underscores how crazy this case is because it’s exactly the scenario that Congress was worried about when it amended the act. To have to go to the Supreme Court to get what Congress clearly provided is very frustrating.”
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Wrong-house searches in 1973 sparked change in Federal Tort Claims Act
Congress added a provision to the Federal Tort Claims Act to allow lawsuits against law enforcement after federal agents mistakenly stormed two homes in Collinsville, Illinois, on April 23, 1973, during then-President Richard Nixon’s so-called war on drugs.
In the first house, Herbert and Evelyn Giglotto awoke to the noise of plainclothes agents smashing down their door and holding them at gunpoint, according to a filing in the Atlanta case by six current members of Congress. The agents left without explanation after realizing they were at the wrong address, the filing said.
A half-hour later, other agents made the same mistake another house. Don and Virginia Askew were sitting down to a fish dinner with their son Michael when plainclothes agents surrounded their house, some armed with shotguns. Virginia Askew screamed and fainted, according to the filing. The agents left after discovering the mistaken address.
Current lawmakers − Sens. Rand Paul, R-Ky.; Ron Wyden, D-Ore.; and Cynthia Lummis, R-Wyo.; and Reps. Harriet Hageman, R-Wyo.; Nikema Williams, D-Ga.; and Thomas Massie, R-Ky. − said in their filing with the Supreme Court that Congress changed the statute specifically for wrong-house searches like the one in Atlanta.
“That proviso was tailor-made for cases like this one,” the lawmakers said.
Federal courts dismissed Atlanta case but lawmakers call rulings ‘backwards’
Court decisions dismissing the Atlanta case focused on the Constitution’s Supremacy Clause, which holds that federal law is supreme above state law. The family sued in federal court, where judges ruled that even though one portion of the tort law allowed a lawsuit against federal law enforcement, another portion of the statute prevents such a lawsuit because of the discretion granted law enforcement officers. But some lawmakers and legal experts disputed those decisions.
The Supreme Court asked lawyers in the case to focus on the dispute about the Supremacy Clause.
U.S. District Court Judge J.P. Boulee dismissed the family’s lawsuit in December 2022. He ruled the Federal Tort Claims Act barred claims for negligence, infliction of emotional distress, trespass and interference with private property. Boulee also dismissed claims for false imprisonment and assault and battery under the Supremacy Clause.
The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the dismissal under the Supremacy Clause by ruling that law enforcement agents should be afforded the discretion to make mistakes.
“Therefore the decision that Guerra made – albeit mistaken – in the rapidly-changing and dangerous situation of executing a high-risk warrant at night constitute the kind of reasonable mistakes that the Fourth Amendment contemplates,” the appeals court ruled.
The Supreme Court appointed Christopher Mills, a lawyer from Charleston, South Carolina, to flesh out arguments about the Supremacy Clause. Mills argued the clause blocks the lawsuit because the Federal Tort Claims Act directs federal judges to interpret the merits of this type of case based on state law.
“The statute directs federal courts to step into the shoes of state courts,” Mills wrote. “A state rule that conflicts with federal law is preempted.”
Toi Cliatt, Trina Martin and her son, Gabe Watson, pictured around the time of the mistaken FBI raid.
But Gregory Sisk, a law professor at University of St. Thomas in Minnesota who has written a book about litigation with the federal government, said in a written argument that interpretation is “contrary to Congress’s intent” and leaves families with “no meaningful remedy for the trauma they suffered.”
The six current lawmakers who filed an argument in the case said the 11th Circuit turned the Supremacy Clause “on its ear” by not recognizing Congress’s power to “waive the federal government’s immunity.”
“The Eleventh Circuit has matters backwards,” they wrote.
Mistaken search goes from ‘ear piercing’ noise to ‘really quiet’
As FBI agents swarmed into the house at 3756 Denville Trace, Cliatt and Martin huddled in a walk-in closet as he barricaded the door shut with his hand and foot. Hearing people moving throughout the house, Cliatt worried that his shotgun wasn’t enough to fend off the intruders.
But Cliatt could also hear police chatter, so he relented and opened the closet door. FBI agents in tactical gear pulled him out of the closet, pushed him face-down on the floor, handcuffed him and held assault rifles to his head.
“It was a feeling that just came over me that I’m just surrendering my life because I’m not really sure who is on the other side of the door,” Cliatt told USA TODAY. “It’s all happening so fast. You have to make the best decision that you can for your family.”
Martin, feeling vulnerable in just a T-shirt, screamed about wanting to get to her son, but was told to stay put.
“I begged and pleaded,” Martin said. “They told me to shut up.”
Gabe, Martin’s child, said when two or three agents entered his room, he kept his hands up and pushed back his blanket. One agent remained with him as he lay face down on the bed with his arms out, praying.
“It was an ear-piercing noise, ringing into my ears,” Gabe told USA TODAY. “I felt so uncomfortable and scared. If I made any movement, I would have been shot.”
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Back in the master bedroom, agents saw that Cliatt didn’t have the suspect’s face and neck tattoos. Lemoine noticed a piece of mail with a different address from the search warrant. Cliatt heard agents whispering before someone asked for his address. The chaotic situation calmed down when he answered.
“It went from a drill sergeant situation to really quiet,” Cliatt said.
The agents uncuffed Cliatt after realizing their mistake. Guerra apologized, documented the damage to the home and left a business card with the name of his supervisor. As the agents marched outside, Cliatt followed them, asking for an explanation. He watched as they approached the suspect’s house at 3741 Landau Lane.
“I’m going, ‘They’re about to do it again,’” Cliatt said. “I don’t know the people who live in the house. I was just hoping that nothing deadly happened in that place.”
‘Probably the lowest part of my life’: Gabe Martin
The mistaken search lasted only about 5 minutes. But the repercussions have echoed for years.
Gabe said after the episode, he pulled nervously at threads in his socks, pants or shirt – even picking the paint off walls.
“I don’t know how I did that, but I did. It was because of a nervous condition,” said Gabe, who is now 14 and in middle school. “That was probably the lowest part of my life.”
Martin said she was distraught and pursued the lawsuit after seeing how the episode affected her son, who was diagnosed with post-traumatic stress disorder and depression.
“They shouldn’t get away with this and we shouldn’t be dismissed and it shouldn’t be swept underneath the carpet,” said Martin, who works in human resources after earlier serving four years in the Army as a specialist. “So that’s what made me file a lawsuit.”
This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Can FBI be sued if agents raid wrong house? Supreme Court weighing in