The FBI Raided This Innocent Woman’s House. Will She Ever Get Justice?
On an early morning in 2017, Curtrina Martin inadvertently attended a pyrotechnic exhibit she compares to the Fourth of July. Except it was October, and it was inside her home in Georgia.
The source was considerably less joyful. The FBI detonated a flash grenade in the house and ripped the door from its hinges in a raid to arrest a man, Joseph Riley, accused of gang activity, who lived in a different house approximately one block over.
The agents would not realize their mistake until after they made their way into Martin’s bedroom, where they found her and her then-fiancé, Hilliard Toi Cliatt, hiding in the closet, which the couple had retreated to when they were jolted awake by the commotion. An officer on the SWAT team dragged Cliatt out and handcuffed him, while another officer screamed and pointed his gun at Martin, who had reportedly fallen on a rack amid the chaos.
“I don’t know if there is a proper word that I can use” to describe her fear that night, Martin tells me. She says she initially had no idea it was law enforcement that had broken into her home. Her 7-year-old son was in a different room she couldn’t get to.
The leader of the SWAT raid, Lawrence Guerra, who was then a special agent with the FBI, noticed that Cliatt did not match the physical description of Riley, while Michael Lemoine, another FBI special agent, saw a piece of mail with a different address than the target. Guerra ultimately ended the raid.
Almost seven years have gone by, and Martin and Cliatt are still trying to find recourse for what happened that night. A federal lawsuit they filed continues to wind its way through the judiciary, although the courts have thus far immunized the government from having to pay any damages.
The most recent decision came in April of this year, when the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 11th Circuit ruled that Guerra—who, according to his LinkedIn, retired from the FBI in 2022—did not violate the Constitution when he led the SWAT team to the wrong house. In the court’s view, Guerra had taken reasonable steps to prepare for the raid, despite that they didn’t pay off. Martin’s home and the target home “share several conspicuous features,” the judges wrote in a per curiam opinion, such as both being “beige in color” and having “a large tree in the front.” It was also dark outside, rendering it “difficult to ascertain the house numbers on the mailboxes,” they wrote.
“Therefore, the decisions that Guerra made—albeit mistaken—in the rapidly-changing and dangerous situation of executing a high-risk warrant at night,” the court ruled, “constitute the kind of reasonable mistakes that the Fourth Amendment contemplates.” He received immunity.
Martin and Cliatt also sued under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), which allows victims of abuse to bring certain state torts against the federal government. There are a few wide-ranging exceptions to that, too, however. Such claims are doomed if the government’s misconduct arose from a duty that “involves discretion.” Since “the FBI did not have stringent policies or procedures in place that dictate how agents are to prepare for warrant executions,” Guerra had discretion, the 11th Circuit said, and is thus protected. Next came the Supremacy Clause, the rule that bars state tort claims if “a federal official’s acts ‘have some nexus with furthering federal policy and can reasonably be characterized as complying with the full range of federal law,'” as the court recently reiterated in Kordash v. United States (2022). The 11th Circuit said that stipulation foreclosed Martin and Cliatt’s remaining claims.
The ruling is not a novel one. Karen Jimerson and James Parks were not suspected of any crime when a Texas SWAT team broke into their family home—breaking the door down, smashing windows, and setting off a flash grenade—and held them and their children at gunpoint. Although their house had several characteristics differentiating it from the officers’ target, the family’s suit was dismissed on qualified immunity grounds. Back in Georgia, over two dozen cops raided Onree Norris’ house in 2018 when the warrant was intended for his neighbor. Again, the police received qualified immunity.
More recently, Amy Hadley’s home was left a shell of what it was after police detonated dozens of tear gas grenades into the house, threw flash grenades through the front door, shattered windows, punched holes in the walls, destroyed the security cameras, and more. An officer’s faulty investigation led them there. The government said that it’s her problem to shoulder alone. (Her lawsuit is ongoing.)
Many insurance policies do not cover damage caused by the government, as some victims have learned the hard way. Cliatt’s fortunately did, and the FBI later reimbursed the insurance company, according to Martin. But she says that is a small consolation. “It’s much more than physical damage,” she says. “It’s also mental. I had to take off work for almost a year. So putting myself and my son through therapy at the time, it took a big strain financially on me….My son at the time experienced so much trauma, and having to put him through therapy and just the anxiety and fear that he experienced from that, that’s enough to want to say, ‘Hey, there should be some justice done in this situation.'”
Martin’s attorney, Patrick Jaicomo of the Institute for Justice, feels similarly. “If someone asked me why a lawsuit is necessary to challenge a wrong-house raid, even though insurance or another source has paid to repair the property damage, I would ask them to put themselves in my clients’ shoes. Which costs would you rather shoulder?” he says. “A new handrailing and a broken door or the permanent image of your seven-year-old cowering under his sheets as scary, angry men shouted and pointed guns at him in his bed, while you’re terrified, confused, and helplessly pinned down in your room wearing nothing but a t-shirt? My clients have lost sleep, jobs, trust, and a basic sense of security in their own home because the FBI couldn’t be bothered to check an address before leading a pre-dawn military-style raid in a residential neighborhood.” They will soon ask the Supreme Court to hear the case.
Mistakes happen; police officers are human. But it being an honest error should not absolve the government from making a victim whole. These things are not mutually exclusive. To argue it was too dark outside to check the address number, as the 11th Circuit wrote in its opinion, is to hold the FBI—whose agents wield an immense amount of power—to a pitifully low standard.
That the damage done that night was more than physical is evidenced in the way Martin now views law enforcement. Previously a track coach for the Police Athletic League, she is now jaded. “You look at them as a safe haven. You look at them as protectors, and someone, if you’re in a situation where you need help, that they’re going to come and help you,” she says. “There’s been a lot of incidents of negligence, and it’s like no one takes accountability. And there needs to be awareness. It’s really sad that the people that you look up to for protection are the ones that seem to harm you the most.”
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