Wrong Address, Wrong Target, Real Terror: U.S. Supreme Court Agrees to Hear FBI Raid Case
WASHINGTON, DC — The U.S. Supreme Court has agreed to hear a case that could determine whether FBI agents can be held accountable for a botched SWAT raid that terrorized an innocent family in the middle of the night.
As detailed in Martin v. United States, a heavily armed FBI SWAT team mistakenly stormed a Georgia home—armed with rifles, clad in tactical gear, and deploying a flashbang grenade—causing the family inside, with a 7-year-old son, to fear they were being burglarized. In an amicus brief filed jointly with the National Police Accountability Project, The Rutherford Institute urged the Court to hold federal agents accountable under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA) for recklessly invading the wrong residence, located a block away from the intended target: a suspected violent gang member. Fearing they were being burglarized, Ms. Martin tried to get to her 7-year-old son before officers forced one family member onto the bedroom floor at gunpoint, and then pointed a gun in Ms. Martin’s face.
“These SWAT raids have become a thinly veiled, court-sanctioned excuse to let heavily armed police crash through doors in the dead of night,” said constitutional attorney John W. Whitehead, president of The Rutherford Institute and author of Battlefield America: The War on the American People. “Too often, they’re marked by incompetence, devastation, and death—leaving a trail of broken homes and broken lives, while law enforcement escapes accountability.”
As part of the FBI’s “Operation Red Tape” to address violent gang activity in Georgia, an FBI SWAT team was deployed to execute an arrest warrant at the home of a suspected gang member. Although the team leader had previously conducted a site survey and received a photograph, map, and directions to the correct location, he relied on his personal GPS during a pre-raid drive-by. That GPS led him instead to the home of Curtrina Martin, which looked similar to the target residence. Critically, he failed to verify the street number. During the predawn hours, the SWAT leader led a caravan of vehicles with FBI SWAT team agents and members of the Atlanta Police Department to Martin’s house, thinking it was the target house. SWAT team members surrounded the home, breached the front door, and deployed a flashbang. Fearing they were under attack, Martin tried to reach her 7-year-old son. Only after detaining the family did the agents realize they had the wrong man—he lacked the gang suspect’s identifying face and neck tattoos—and that the house number did not match their intended destination.
The family subsequently filed a lawsuit for negligence, infliction of emotional distress, trespass, false arrest and imprisonment, and assault and battery under the Federal Tort Claims Act, which allows plaintiffs to bring state-law torts against the United States. However, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals dismissed the lawsuit, citing the FBI’s lack of any formal policy for verifying target locations during warrant executions. Although the Supreme Court previously refused to hear Jimerson v. Lewis, a similar case involving a local SWAT team raid on the wrong home, it has agreed to take up Martin, which involves federal agents and the scope of the Federal Tort Claims Act.
Eugene R. Fidell with the Yale Law School Supreme Court Clinic, along with Charles A. Rothfeld of Mayer Brown LLP and Paul W. Hughes of McDermott Will & Emery LLP, advanced the arguments in the Martin amicus brief.
Martin v. United States
Article posted with permission from John Whitehead