Denied appeal by lower courts for a SWAT raid gone wrong at her house, Atlanta mom Trina Martin now seeks recompense at the nation’s highest court.
A tlanta mom Trina Martin got two shocks when a mixed-up FBI SWAT team raided her home by mistake. The initial jolt came fast and furious, starting with a flash-bang grenade in her living room. The surprise that followed was more insidious: a slow and deliberate betrayal in court.
Citing a technicality in federal law, judges told Martin she could not sue the United States. They dismissed her case without a trial, rejected her appeal, and left her family alone to process the trauma.
The imbalance of power stunned Martin. Federal agents had busted open her front door, but the courthouse doors remained locked. Undeterred, Martin petitioned the Supreme Court to grant access.
Allies quickly emerged. A bipartisan group of lawmakers from the House and Senate filed a brief in October, urging the Supreme Court to take the case. The justices agreed on January 27, 2025, and oral argument will occur in late April. Our public interest law firm, the Institute for Justice, represents Martin.
The ordeal started before dawn on October 18, 2017, while the family slept. Martin’s then-partner, Toi Cliatt, bolted awake when the chaos started. Believing they were being robbed, he pulled Martin into the master bedroom closet, where he kept a legally owned shotgun.
As he reached for the weapon, a masked man in body armor yanked him out, threw him to the ground, and handcuffed him. Martin cowered in a corner, blinded by a flashlight attached to an agent’s rifle, screaming for her seven-year-old son, Gabe.
Other agents already had found the boy and pointed guns at him while he hid under a blanket in a nearby bedroom. “I felt like if I move, I was going to get killed,” says Gabe, who is now 14.
At some point during the raid, the intruders identified themselves as FBI agents with a warrant. But as the smoke cleared, they realized their blunder. They were terrorizing the wrong people. At the wrong house. On the wrong street.
The agents regrouped in the front yard and launched a second raid at the correct location. The officer in charge eventually returned and left a calling card for his supervisor, but it quickly became clear that the federal government did not intend to help the family deal with the trauma it had inflicted.
Cliatt, a long-haul trucker, struggled with insomnia and drowsiness at work and had to quit. Martin had to resign from her position as a track coach because her mind returned to the raid every time the starting gun fired. And Gabe needed years of therapy.
With no other way to recover damages for their injuries, Martin and Cliatt sued the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA), a 1946 law that allows people to seek compensation when federal employees injure them.
Congress amended the FTCA in 1974 specifically to ensure that victims of federal wrong-house raids have a remedy. But in the decades since then, courts have muddled what should be a straightforward law.
Interpretations vary nationwide across the 13 federal circuits. This means the FTCA’s ability to provide the relief that Congress intended depends far too much on where a victim lives, rather than the text of the law.
The Eleventh U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals, which includes Georgia, claims the FBI has “discretionary authority” to raid the wrong house. This interpretation guts the FTCA. Federal agents can kick open the wrong door, and the government can escape accountability by claiming sovereign immunity. Plainly preventable — and potentially deadly — encounters are reclassified as protected “policy decisions.”
The Supreme Court must end the gamesmanship and uphold the FTCA as written.
More broadly, courts at all levels must stop shielding the police of all sorts from accountability for avoidable mistakes. Martin, Cliatt, and Gabe are not the only victims. Our firm is litigating similar wrong-house raids in Indiana and Texas. Other cases have occurred in Colorado, Kentucky, Ohio, and elsewhere.
When public employees raid the wrong house, the government — not innocent property owners — should bear the costs.
Patrick Jaicomo and Dylan Moore are attorneys at the Institute for Justice in Arlington, Va., and represent Martin, Cliatt, and Gabe before the Supreme Court.