ATLANTA, Ga. (InvestigateTV) – Seven-year-old Gabe Watson was startled awake by the sound of a flash-bang grenade exploding just outside his bedroom door.
“One second, I’m asleep; next thing I know, I have a gun pointed in my face,” Watson, now 14, said.
The October 2017 FBI raid of the home in west Atlanta is now headed to the U.S. Supreme Court. Justices agreed to hear the case to settle discrepancies in the way courts interpret the Federal Tort Claims Act.
In some regions of the country, the law allows families to sue the federal government for the actions of federal employees. At the same time, other circuits have ruled that the law does not apply to federal agents.
“We can’t do anything about what happened to us, but we can stop it, hopefully, from happening to someone else,” said Toi Cliatt, Watson’s stepfather.
The family of three was startled awake by the sound of several FBI SWAT agents storming their house with M-4 rifles.
“In my mind, [I thought] whoever this is, they’re coming to kill us,” said Trina Martin, Cliatt’s wife and Watson’s mother.
Martin said she instinctively ran toward her son’s room across the hall, but Cliatt – thinking this was a home invasion – pulled her toward the closet where they kept their guns.
Martin and Cliatt were not suspected of any crimes. The warrant’s address was for a similar-looking house on the next corner, across the street.
The couple hid in their walk-in closet and said they were about to grab a shotgun and a pistol when the FBI SWAT team won a tug of war over the closet door handle.
FBI agents handcuffed and questioned Cliatt as if he was the target of the arrest and search warrants. In their later depositions, FBI agents testified that Cliatt had no tattoos on his neck like the suspect. An agent noticed a piece of mail in the bedroom with a different address number and street name than the one on the warrants.
Atlanta Police body-camera video from the officers controlling the perimeter around the house shows the FBI SWAT team walking out of the Martin home and toward the correct house, where the same scene played out.
The FBI SWAT team did not wear body cameras at the time as a matter of policy, which has since changed.
Cliatt said he watched the raid of the second home from the opening left where their front door used to be.
Watson said he started having trouble at school. He couldn’t sleep at night. He and his mother said he would have to bring extra clothing to school because he would pull the threads out of his shirts and socks due to nerves and anxiety after the raid.
“I remember I wanted to be a police officer growing up,” Watson said. “I looked up to these guys.” Now 14, he said he wants to be a football player and a defense lawyer instead.
“This cost me my childhood,” Watson said.
The family filed a lawsuit against the FBI in federal court. A judge dismissed the case because of a precedent in the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which ruled the Federal Tort Claims Act can’t be used to sue federal agents in cases like this.
The Institute for Justice, a non-partisan organization in the nation’s capital, took the case and agreed to represent Martin and Cliatt free of charge. They filed an appeal to the 11th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals, which affirmed the lower court’s dismissal of the case on similar grounds.
Other federal circuits have ruled that the federal law can be used to sue the FBI for wrong-house raids, which led the U.S. Supreme Court to take the case in January to settle the matter. The justices wrote, “Petitioners are the innocent victims of a wrong-house raid conducted by an FBI SWAT team in Atlanta, Georgia … in one or more ways, the opinion [from the 11th Circuit US Court of Appeals] conflicts with decisions from every other circuit.”
“I just think about my son; he was seven, and the trauma he went through, and [we wanted] just for finally somebody to hear us out,” Martin said.
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The U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in the Atlanta case on April 29. The high court’s eventual decision this year will set the standard for suing federal agencies nationwide for mistakes made by their agents and employees.
The case will not have any effect on all the wrong-house raids conducted by local sheriff offices or police departments. The Federal Tort Claims Act, as the name implies, is only for federal agencies.
Cliatt and Martin said they’ve seen several raids around the country in the seven-plus years since that night, including one in Henry County just four months later. That case was also dismissed by the 11th Circuit. The family believes their case is a start toward accountability.
“We’re seeing it happen time and time again,” Cliatt said. “Situations happen like this after our case, and we’re sitting back, shaking our heads [and asking] when is it going to stop? Hopefully, we are the ones that will help to make that change.”
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