When a SWAT team raids a family’s home in the middle of the night, the officers ought to be very sure they have the right house. But no officer did that the night a SWAT team raided an innocent family’s home in Willard, North Carolina, in April 2024. And the officers had indeed raided the wrong house. Officers terrorized the family with flash-bang grenades, shattered glass, and aimed guns at children as they were ordered out of their bedrooms.
The fugitive for whom the officers were looking was not at the home. Even worse, the officers lacked probable cause to believe he had ever been there. The officers misled a judge into issuing a warrant to search the house based on false information and omitted facts that pointed in the opposite direction. The raid left Alisa Carr, Avery Marshall, and their kids physically harmed; psychologically traumatized; and without a secure and clean home to live. Alisa and Avery can’t afford to repair the damage to the home. And the responsible counties have refused to compensate them for the destruction.
Hoping to prevent other families from suffering the same wrongs, Alisa and Avery have teamed up with IJ to hold the government accountable. Officers cannot lie or disregard obvious or known exculpatory information when applying for a warrant, misleading a judge into issuing a warrant without probable cause. And when officers intentionally destroy an innocent person’s property for the public use of apprehending a suspected criminal, the public as a whole should bear the cost of the damage, not innocent unlucky property owners.
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The slipshod investigation
At the beginning of April 2024, officers in North Carolina began investigating a series of vehicle break-ins across a few counties. The suspect had broken into unlocked vehicles and stolen property from inside. Officers identified Joseph Clark, Jr. as the suspect.
Officers talked with the suspect’s father, who said Joseph Clark, Jr. had been riding in his sister’s gray Nissan passenger car with a specific license plate. With that information, the officers knew or could have easily learned the vehicle identification number and the fact that the vehicle was a 2007 Sentra owned by Joseph Clark or the suspect’s sister.
Verizon gave the officers location data on the phone they believed was the suspect’s. The best that data could do was place the phone within 52 meters of Alisa Carr and Avery Marshall’s address in Pender County, North Carolina.
Although at least five other properties lie within that radius, the officers targeted Alisa and Avery’s house. Not because the officers observed the suspect or any suspicious activity at the house. They did not. The officers observed only Alisa’s car. And Alisa’s car was registered to her at her home address, was a light silver Nissan Altima, was ten years newer than the suspect vehicle, had a different license plate, and had a different vehicle identification number. No officer apparently checked to see if Alisa’s car was the one described by the suspect’s father.
Still, an officer applied for a warrant to search the house. In the probable-cause affidavit supporting the warrant application, the officer did not mention that at least five other properties lie within 52 meters of where the Verizon data placed the suspect’s phone. And the officer stated that other officers observed at Alisa and Avery’s address the specific vehicle described by the suspect’s father. But that statement was false. Officers observed Alisa’s vehicle at her house, not the vehicle described by the suspect’s father.
Based on the false and misleading information in the warrant application (along with information that the officer, himself, did not personally know), a judge issued a search warrant for Alisa and Avery’s house just after midnight.
SWAT team raids an innocent family’s home
Within about an hour of the warrant being issued, officers from the Pender and Lee County Sheriff’s Offices raided Alisa and Avery’s home. The family was asleep. The house was dark and quiet. There were no signs of the suspect or danger at the home. Officers surrounded the home, and one banged on the front door, shouting.
Avery, who had recently undergone surgery on his back, came to the front door to see what the commotion was about. He peeked through the window near the front door, and officers then busted their way through the front door. They shattered the glass storm door and broke through the front metal door, damaging the door and the door frame and scattering broken glass across the floor inside the home.
Officers threw two flash-bang grenades into the home. One bounced off Avery’s chest and detonated nearby, burning the underside of a sofa and filling the house with noxious fumes.
Officers ordered Avery to lie down. Avery—who was shirtless, exposing the scars and wounds on his back—complied, lying face down on top of the shattered glass.
Officers ordered the two kids out of their rooms at gunpoint. Avery objected as he saw a laser light trained on his 9-year-old’s face. To keep Avery from getting up, an officer stepped on Avery’s back, aggravating his wounds. The officers then handcuffed Avery and yanked him to his feet, reinjuring his back. The officers took the kids outside and interrogated them in a paddy wagon. They interrogated Alisa in the kitchen, where she experienced heart palpitations and difficulty breathing. She pleaded with the officers that she couldn’t breathe, but they still interrogated her in the fumes and accused her of lying when she explained they didn’t know the person the officers were seeking. Eventually someone on the scene called an ambulance, which took Alisa to the hospital for treatment.
Meanwhile, officers interrogated Avery, who insisted that the officers had made a mistake. The family didn’t know and had no connection to the person the officers were looking for.
Officers ransacked the whole house, damaging walls, doors, insulation, and furniture.
As the officers were departing, Avery asked who would pay for all the destruction. He was told that he and Alisa would have to cover the costs themselves and that they should just be glad the officers hadn’t done more damage, like destroying their television.
The aftermath
The SWAT raid left the family psychologically scarred and their home in disrepair.
Alisa, Avery, and the kids often relive the raid in their heads and worry it could happen again. They struggle to sleep at night and do not feel safe in their home. Their trust in the government has plummeted. They question how and why their government could invade and break their home and terrorize them in the middle of the night without any apology or compensation, when the family was innocent.
The storm door was destroyed. The metal front door and door frame were so damaged that the entry leaks whenever it rains, causing water damage to the floor and letting mosquitos into the home. Alisa and Avery cleaned up the glass and gas residue as much as they could. But the other damage to the home remains unrepaired, as Alisa and Avery cannot afford to fix what the officers broke. The counties whose officers inflicted the damage have refused to give just compensation for the damage.
The legal claims
The Fourth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the North Carolina Constitution protect against searches and seizures that are unsupported by probable cause.
Alisa and Avery seek to vindicate their rights under these provisions. The officer who applied for the search warrant falsely stated that officers had seen the suspect vehicle at Alisa and Avery’s address. Without that fact, and given that at least five other properties lie within the area where the suspect’s phone had supposedly been, the officers lacked probable cause to believe the suspect was inside Alisa and Avery’s home.
In addition to these claims, Alisa (who owns the house) has brought claims for just compensation based on the damage to the property. Both the Fifth Amendment of the United States Constitution and the North Carolina Constitution promise just compensation for property taken for a public use. Here, officers intentionally destroyed the property of an innocent owner, Alisa, for the public use of capturing a fugitive. So Alisa is entitled to just compensation for the lost property. This is because the takings provisions of the federal and state constitutions were designed to prevent individuals from bearing public burdens which, in all fairness and justice, should be borne by the public as a whole.
Litigation team
Alisa and Avery are represented by IJ Attorneys Marie Miller and Jared McClain.
About the Institute for Justice
The Institute for Justice (IJ) is a national nonprofit law firm that litigates to protect Americans’ liberty. IJ works to uphold the promises of the Fourth and Fifth Amendments, to protect private property, and to combat qualified immunity—a court-created doctrine that frustrates government accountability and bars the vindication of constitutional rights. IJ is litigating other cases involving erroneous SWAT raids, including a case at the Supreme Court involving the FBI’s raid of the wrong house in Atlanta, and a local government’s raid of an innocent family’s home in Indiana.
