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Supreme Court will decide whether family can sue over mistaken raid by FBI SWAT team

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 28, 2025, 11:49 am CST

The U.S. Supreme Court on Monday agreed to decide whether the U.S. Constitution prevents a family from suing the FBI for its mistaken 2017 SWAT team raid of their Atlanta home.

At issue is whether the lawsuit is barred by the Constitution’s supremacy clause and by a liability exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act for federal employees’ discretionary acts undertaken to advance federal policy.

“If the Federal Tort Claims Act provides a cause of action for anything, it’s a wrong-house raid like the one the FBI conducted here,” the cert petition filed by the Institute for Justice, a nonprofit public interest law firm, argues.

The Institute for Justice represents the plaintiffs, Curtrina Martin; her son (represented by Martin); and Martin’s partner, Hilliard Toi Cliatt.

The family members were awakened before dawn one morning in October 2017 by a flashbang grenade exploding in their living room. Martin’s 7-year-old son was separated from his mother while officers stormed the bedroom with guns drawn, according to the institute’s Jan. 27 press release.

Cliatt pushed Curtrina Martin into the closet and was reaching for his shotgun when an FBI agent threw him to the ground. FBI agents soon realized that they had raided the wrong place.

The 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals at Atlanta ruled against the family in an unpublished decision in April 2024.

The Federal Tort Claims Act was enacted in 1946 to waive U.S. sovereign immunity and allow damages for certain torts of federal employees when there would be liability under the same circumstances in the state where the acts happened, according to SCOTUSblog and the government’s petition opposing certiorari. Most intentional torts, however, were not allowed.

The law was amended in 1974 to make clear that intentional actions of law enforcement officers could be the basis of suits, according to the Institute for Justice.

“But the FTCA includes a host of exceptions, and circuit courts can’t agree on when they apply,” the press release said.

The 11th Circuit ruled against the family on two grounds. First, the appeals court said intentional-tort claims covered by the law enforcement amendment—for false imprisonment, assault and battery—were nonetheless barred by the supremacy clause because they concern acts with some nexus to furthering federal policy.

No other circuit has taken this position, according to the Institute for Justice.

“The 11th Circuit has created a unique supremacy clause bar to the FTCA that overrides congressional intent,” the cert petition says.

Second, the appeals court barred claims for torts falling outside the law enforcement amendment—for trespass, interference with private property and infliction of emotional distress. The 11th Circuit held that the claims are barred by the discretionary function exception to the Federal Tort Claims Act, which bars claims arising from a government official’s performance of a duty or a function that involves discretion.

The appeals court reasoned that FBI agents had discretion in preparing for execution of a warrant, and their decisions are susceptible to policy analysis.

The courts are “badly split” over the discretionary function exception, the cert petition says.

The case is Martin v. United States. The SCOTUSblog case page is here.

Publications covering the cert grant include SCOTUSblog, Law.com and the Washington Post.

Write a letter to the editor, share a story tip or update, or report an error.

A judge quashed the murder charges against the disgraced former Houston police officer accused of lying to justify a no-knock raid that resulted in officers killing a couple in Texas.

As previously reported by Law&Crime, the officer in question, Gerald Goines, allegedly claimed in search warrant documents that he used two confidential informants to buy heroin from Dennis Tuttle, 59, and Rhogena Nicholas, 58, two people falsely accused of dealing drugs.

Goines’ defense argued that the indictments were not specific about which tampering laws he violated, according to Houston ABC affiliate KTRK.

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Criminal Justice

Judge orders return of photographed legal documents taken by officers in raid of BLM attorney’s home

By Debra Cassens Weiss

January 30, 2024, 10:48 am CST

A Los Angeles judge has ordered police to return or destroy photographs that they took of legal documents in a search last week of the home of an attorney representing a leader of Black Lives Matter.

Judge Rupert Byrdsong issued the order Friday, report the Associated Press and the Los Angeles Times.

Lawyer Dermot Givens, 67, said about a dozen Los Angeles police officers in tactical gear surrounded his townhouse Jan. 23, showed him a partial warrant that had his address but no name, and proceeded to ransack the home.

Givens was at first ousted from his home, but when he returned, he saw police photographing documents from the case of Melina Abdullah, the co-founder of the Los Angeles chapter of Black Lives Matter. She has sued police for allegedly mishandling a response to a false report of an emergency at her home in 2020.

The documents were on Givens’ kitchen table.

The warrant sought guns, ammunition, identity theft materials, cameras, lock-picking equipment and electronic devices, according to the Los Angeles Times. Police told Givens that they were looking for a younger man named “Tyler,” and an Apple AirTag near his home led to the police response.

Givens does not know anyone by that name, and he has lived in the home for more than 20 years. He told the AP that police “know exactly who I am and where I live,” and this is the latest instance of police harassment for his lawsuits against the Los Angeles Police Department.

A Los Angeles police spokesperson told the Los Angeles Times and the AP that it could not comment because of open criminal and internal-affairs investigations.