FBI wrong-house raid: agent loses qualified immunity, FTCA claims fail

Key points: FBI wrong-house raid agent

• Before dawn on October 18, 2017, an FBI SWAT team broke into Katrina Martin's Georgia home with flashbangs and rifles and held her family, including her 7-year-old son, at gunpoint, though the warrant was for a house about three doors away on a different street.
• The agent who planned the raid blamed his personal Garmin GPS, the record disputes whether he did a site survey or drive-by, and he threw the Garmin away shortly afterward with no explanation.
• The Supreme Court ruled 9-0 that the FTCA has no Supremacy Clause defense and clarified its law enforcement proviso, but left the discretionary function question for the Eleventh Circuit to decide on remand.
• On remand, the panel held that raid planning choices such as site surveys, staging, entry and timing, and even the on-scene address check, fall within the discretionary function exception, so all five FTCA counts against the United States fail.
• On the Fourth Amendment claim, the panel relied on its 1995 Hartsfield precedent and the agent's GPS, phone maps and target-location alerts to hold that a jury could find he made no reasonable effort to find the right house, calling it plain incompetence.
• Judge Jordan's concurrence, joined by the whole panel, calls the circuit's discretionary function case law a mess and names this case as a vehicle for en banc review; the video puts the family's rehearing deadline around November 23.

About this Drama and Gripe video

FBI wrong-house raid case Martin v. United States returns from the Eleventh Circuit after the Supreme Court's 9-0 ruling. Armed Scholar explains the split result on remand: the United States stays immune from all five Federal Tort Claims Act counts under the discretionary function exception, but the agent who led the 2017 Georgia raid is denied qualified immunity, so the family's Fourth Amendment claim against him goes back to the district court.

Transcript: FBI wrong-house raid