Is a Raid on the Wrong House Defensible Before the Supreme Court?

Last week, the Supreme Court heard argument in Martin v. United States, No. 24-362, a case that concerned whether the Federal Tort Claims Act provides a remedy in a case where the FBI raided the wrong home. In the pre-dawn hours of October 18, 2017, a masked FBI SWAT team smashed open the door at 3756 Denville Trace, detonated a flashbang grenade, and stormed into the home. Guns drawn, they handcuffed the man they found while keeping the gun drawn on the woman, who was screaming to protect her seven-year-old son hiding under the covers in his bedroom. During questioning, the handcuffed male revealed that he lived at that Denville Trace address. The FBI went silent, realizing that they had raided the wrong home on the wrong street in search of a gang member. The upscale home with the well-manicured lawn had not clued them in that this might not be the house they were looking for.

The household members were left dazed as the FBI left but promised to be back. They completed the raid on the correct house, returned and apologized after documenting the damage they caused. Their excuse for their mistake: a personal GPS device used to locate their quarry had directed the leader to the wrong location.

The facts recalled for me the somewhat similar facts that in the case that became Mapp v. Ohio, 367 U.S. 643 (1961), the landmark search and seizure decision. There, too, law enforcement officers raided a home on the wrong street – that time in search of a bombing suspect. They had no search warrant. Rather than withdraw once their error became clear, the police conducted a search until they found something they could use to charge the resident, Dollree Mapp, with a crime. In the basement, police found racy books and drawings that Ms. Mapp said belonged to a prior boarder. They charged her with possession of obscene materials. A conviction resulted in a sentence of seven years. Ms. Mapp appealed, defending the materials on First Amendment grounds. When the case emerged from the Supreme Court, however, the Court eschewed the free-speech issue and held that the Fourth Amendment prohibited warrantless searches and declared the materials obtained inadmissible, applying the exclusionary rule to the States.

The current case is unlikely to result in a leading precedent, though. The government has defended, arguing that the error does not fall within the Federal Tort Claims Act’s waiver of sovereign immunity under the discretionary-function doctrine. At oral argument, a Justice Department lawyer dubbed the FBI’s error a “reasonable mistake” and denied that a 1974 FTCA amendment that addressed raids on the wrong house did not apply, prompting Justice Sotomayor to characterize that defense as “ridiculous.” Justice Gorsuch chimed in, “How about making sure you’re on the right street? Checking a street sign—is that asking too much?”

However sympathetic these facts appear, it is important to remember that both the district court and the Eleventh Circuit ruled in favor of the government. The Eleventh Circuit held that the plaintiffs’ claims for negligence, trespass, and infliction of emotional distress did not fall within the exception that applied to assault, battery, false imprisonment, false arrest, abuse of process, or malicious prosecution at the hands of law enforcement. Instead, it viewed the case through the discretionary-function lens, which finds no liability where the government actor must exercise judgment, even if that judgment turns out to be wrong.

I flag the case, and the echoes it has from Mapp, for readers to view when the decision comes down – and what it says, strategically, about playing to heartstrings versus technical requirements of a law when you reach the more free-form nature of briefing and argument that is often tolerated in the Supreme Court.