Last week, the Supreme Court heard of a lawsuit from families whose home was accidentally attacked by the FBI, and they were barred from bringing their civil suit to trial. Before the Court: Could the plaintiff be able to sue the government under the Federal Tort Claims Act (FTCA)?
Despite Congress’ revisions to the law to help victims of federal law enforcement fraud in the 1970s, plaintiffs Cartrina Martin and Toy Critt are prohibited from lawsuits, an oral debate has entered into the FTCA weed, where plaintiffs are prohibited from lawsuits. However, there was one particularly useful exchange between the court and Frederick Liu, assistant to the Department of Justice’s Attorney General.
Liu: The officers here were weighing public safety considerations, efficient considerations, operational security, and the idea that they didn’t want to delay the start of warrant execution because they wanted to run all warrants simultaneously. These are exactly what the officers say: “Well, should I take one more extra precautions to make sure I’m in the right home?” Here, the petitioner suggests, for example, that the officers need to check the home number in their mailbox.
Judge Neil Gorsuch: Yes, you might look at the address of the house before knocking down the door.
Liu: Yes. And, as the district court found in 52(a), that kind of decision is met with policy trade-offs to check the House of Representatives –
Gorsuch: Really?
liu: – The numbers on the edge of the driveway mean exposing the agent to a potential line of fire from the window.
Gorsuch: Why not make sure you’re on the right track? That’s… you know, are you asking for too much?
What the government actually thinks they are seeking basic due diligence here, that is, that they require agents to be in the right place before they explode explosives in their homes and tear the door off the hinge, fascinates the nation’s general allergies to accountability. What’s even more tragic is that the argument went well.
The FBI SWAT team wrote in the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals in their ruling against Martin and Critt last year, “It’s difficult to find the house number in your mailbox.” Lawrence Guerra, the leader of the attack, said the court when he led officers to the wrong house. There, the agent put out a flash grenade, removes the main entrance, plunges into the couple’s bedroom, hugging the handcuffed Cleart at the muzzle, causing Martin to fail to reach her seven-year-old son in another room.
“I don’t know if there’s any suitable words I can use,” Martin said as she explained the fear she felt that night. reason Before the court filed her case last year. “There are a lot of cases of negligence and no one is accountable. And it requires awareness. It’s really sad that the people you respect for protection are those who seem to harm you the most.”
Also, distress: The government believes it should be able to combine stratospheric power with lower standards proportional to it. It is still unclear whether the Supreme Court will agree.
