“When you’re not able to protect your child or at least fight to protect your child, that’s a feeling that no parent ever wants to feel,” plaintiff Trina Martin said.
The Supreme Court has agreed to hear a lawsuit alleging that federal agents stormed an Atlanta mother’s home, only to realize later on that they had entered the wrong building.
According to The Associated Press, the lawsuit was filed on behalf of Trina Martin, her 7-year-old son, and her then-boyfriend, Toi Cliatt. Martin claims that, in the middle of the night, a team of Federal Bureau of Investigation agents burst into her bedroom; her son screamed for help from another room.
The FBI agents were only in Martin’s house for several minutes before they realized their mistake. Now, attorneys for Martin claim that their client has been left emotionally traumatized.
“We’ll never be the same, mentally, emotionally, psychologically,” she said on Friday. “Mentally, you can suppress it, but you can’t really get over it.”
Martin’s former boyfriend, Toi Cliatt, also claims that he can no longer sleep and has, as a result, been forced to leave his job as a semi-truck driver.
“The road is hypnotizing,” he said. “I became a liability to my company.”
However, the lawsuit has already had a contentious history. In 2022, an Atlanta-based federal judge dismissed Martin’s lawsuit. Last year, the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the same decision, with the Supreme Court agreeing to take the case earlier this year.
One of the most significant issues the justices are expected to address relates to the circumstances in which people can sue the federal government and its law enforcement agencies.
Martin’s lawyers say that Congress clearly allowed for these types of lawsuits in 1974, shortly after a series of law enforcement raids on the wrong homes made national headlines.
“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,” Martin’s legal team wrote in a brief submitted to the Supreme Court.
The Associated Press notes that, after breaking down the door to Martin’s house, a member of the FBI’s SWAT team dragged Cliatt out of a closet and put him in handcuffs. However, another agent quickly realized that 54-year-old Cliatt did not have any of the suspect’s tattoos.
The lead agent in charge of the raid later returned to the Martin’s house to apologize. He left a business card with her supervisor’s name, but Cliatt said that family never received any compensation—not even for the physical damage to their home.
Martin, for her part, said that the most stressful part of the raid was having to hear her son’s cries for help.
“When you’re not able to protect your child or at least fight to protect your child, that’s a feeling that no parent ever wants to feel,” she said.
Sources
The FBI mistakenly raided their Atlanta home. Now the Supreme Court will hear their lawsuit
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