Cathy George and Institute for Justice attorneys Marie Miller and John Korevec speak outside a federal courthouse in Atlanta about their lawsuit stemming from a botched raid of George’s Sandy Springs home in 2023. Ross Williams/Georgia Recorder
A Georgia woman is suing local and federal law enforcement officers over what she calls a botched pre-dawn raid of her Sandy Springs condominium in 2023.
“I was immediately staring down the nozzles of machine-style weapons, dozens of machine-style weapons,” said Cathy George. “Their infrared lasers covered me from head to toe. Lighting up like a Christmas tree, paralyzed with fear, I knew I was going to die. Wearing only my T-shirt and underwear, I was immediately pulled out of my unit and into the hallway.”
Speaking to reporters Tuesday outside a federal courthouse in Atlanta, George described being held outside her condo for about 15 minutes as officers ransacked it. George said officers shouted at her, demanding to know the whereabouts of a suspect in a shooting in Mobile, Alabama.
But George had never met or even heard of the man, and the officers had good reason to know he was not in her home – U.S. Marshals had arrested him four months earlier, and he was still in law enforcement custody at the time of the raid on George’s home.
George said the officers left after she showed them photos of her sons to prove they were not the man they thought they were trying to arrest. She said one of the officers said “I think there’s been a mistake” and handed her a business card.
George’s attorneys say the raid was more than a mistake. They argue it was a violation of her constitutional rights to due process and freedom from unreasonable search and seizure.
Her attorneys filed a lawsuit Tuesday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Georgia against a DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office deputy who was also a cross deputized agent for the U.S. Marshals Service, 14 other unnamed officers and U.S. government.
“The government’s botched raid has been devastating for Cathy,” said John Korevec, an attorney with the nonprofit Institute for Justice representing George. “The Constitution promises security in your own home, but for Cathy, that promise was shattered in minutes. This lawsuit is about accountability for Cathy, but it’s about much more than that, too. At stake is a basic principle: In America, the government does not get to march through your door without reason, only to walk away without consequence.”
The U.S. Supreme Court sent a similar case out of Atlanta back to the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals last year after an appeal from the Institute of Justice. That case involves another allegedly botched raid in which agents tossed a flashbang grenade into a home where Trina Martin, her boyfriend and her young son were sleeping. In that case, the agents had shown up at the wrong address.
Korevec said suing the federal government can be an uphill battle because federal agents have protections regular people do not.
“Our hope is that with a successful case in Martin and a successful case for Kathy, that hopefully, in the future, these cases aren’t as hard to claim, and that when the government makes a mistake and they’re not willing to take responsibility for it, that people can have their day in court, that they can present their evidence and they can have a judge listen to their side of the story,” he said.
George said what she wants most is an explanation for how the officers ended up at her home and a guarantee it won’t happen to others.
“I hope that there is change,” she said. “I hope that they are held accountable, and my biggest hope is that this never happens to another person like me.”
The U.S. Marshals Service and DeKalb County Sheriff’s Office declined to comment citing pending litigation.
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