Tennessee Officials ‘Illegally Tore Apart And Terrorized’ A Family Over A Small Amount Of Marijuana, Lawsuit Says

“They acted outrageously and unlawfully. Their actions caused severe emotional trauma.”

By Anita Wadhwani, Tennessee Lookout

A Georgia mom whose five small children were taken from her after a traffic stop has alleged Tennessee Department of Children’s Services (DCS) staff acted with out a legitimate court docket order in violation of the regulation, new filings in a civil rights lawsuit mentioned.

Bianca Clayborne filed suit last year on behalf of herself and her children, who have been positioned in foster take care of 55 days following the February 2023 site visitors cease in rural Tennessee.

Clayborne, her associate and their 5 kids have been on their solution to a funeral in Chicago from their residence in Atlanta when a Tennessee Highway Patrol (THP) officer pulled them over in Coffee County for tinted home windows and a slowpoke violation, an incident report mentioned.

Claiming to smell marijuana, troopers searched the car, discovering fewer than 5 grams, in accordance with the report.

Possession of small quantities of marijuana usually lead to a paper quotation in Tennessee. Instead, troopers arrested Clayborne’s associate, Deonte Williams, cited Clayborne and requested the mom to observe them in her automotive together with her kids to the Coffee County jail to bail Williams out. Williams admitted to the possession, however Clayborne denied she had used marijuana.

In the jailhouse parking zone, social staff confronted Clayborne in her automotive earlier than forcibly taking away her kids, who ranged in age on the time from a seven-year-old to a four-month-old breastfeeding child.

The incident acquired widespread consideration and raised questions on whether or not the household, who’s Black, acquired disparate remedy due to their race. In the times after the Tennessee Lookout first reported the site visitors cease, Tennessee Democrats, the Tennessee Conference of the NAACP and others demanded the children be returned home.

Williams later pled responsible to a single easy possession cost. The cost towards Clayborne was dismissed.

Now the continuing lawsuit towards those that participated within the kids’s elimination—amongst them Tennessee Highway Patrol troopers, Coffee County Sheriff’s deputies, and caseworkers with the Department of Children’s Services—makes a sequence of recent allegations that the method used to take away the youngsters violated the regulation—and that DCS and Coffee County officers destroyed proof and created a false paper path to cowl their tracks.

“These public officials illegally tore apart and terrorized Clayborne’s family,” the lawsuit mentioned. “They acted outrageously and unlawfully. Their actions caused severe emotional trauma to Clayborne and each of her five children.”

A spokesperson with the Tennessee Attorney General’s workplace, which is representing Department of Children Services caseworkers and THP troopers named within the lawsuit, didn’t reply to a request for remark Wednesday.

Attorneys representing Coffee County and its workers argued in authorized filings that the brand new claims are barred by a statute of limitations. They didn’t reply to requests for remark by the Lookout on Wednesday.

‘Momma is not going to give them up without a fight’

Tennessee regulation requires that DCS staff searching for an emergency elimination of kids from their dad and mom file a sworn petition in court docket that particulars proof of kids being abused or uncared for. Then a juvenile choose should challenge a written order earlier than any efforts to separate kids from their dad and mom is carried out.

That didn’t occur on this case, the lawsuit alleges.

Instead, a DCS caseworker who had no firsthand contact with Clayborne or her kids positioned a name to Coffee County General Sessions Judge Greg Perry in regards to the site visitors cease—a name that was exterior the formal authorized course of.

Coffee County officers individually contacted Perry to query whether or not they may legally separate Clayborne from her kids.

At the time, Clayborne was parked within the Coffee County jail parking zone, the place county sheriff deputies had positioned spike strips round her automotive to forestall her from leaving—an unlawful train of police energy to detain a person who was in any other case not below arrest, not topic to any court docket order and free to go away together with her kids, the lawsuit mentioned.

“Well momma is not going to give them up without a fight,” Coffee County Sheriff Investigator James Sherrill instructed Judge Perry, in accordance with a recording of the decision obtained from the county by Clayborne’s attorneys.

“If we get in the middle of this, there’s going to be a damn lawsuit,” Sherrill mentioned.

In response, Perry mentioned officers may arrest Clayborne for disorderly conduct. And, the choose mentioned, “You won’t get in a lawsuit…because I’ve got judicial immunity.”

Perry instructed Coffee County officers his verbal order to take away the youngsters was sufficient.

Tennessee regulation doesn’t acknowledge oral orders from judges to take away kids from a dad or mum’s custody, the lawsuit famous.

“Tennessee does not permit children to be taken from their parents based on a private telephone call to a judge,” authorized filings mentioned.

“Instead, when DCS believes a child should be removed from their home, DCS must file a proper petition and make factual allegations under oath to support the drastic relief of removing a child from their family—and the law requires that the removal can only happen after procuring a valid court order,” paperwork mentioned.

Perry is just not named as a defendant within the lawsuit, which nonetheless alleges he acted with “no lawful authority.”

Perry didn’t return a message left along with his workplace searching for remark in regards to the allegations.

Lawsuit alleges DCS effort to ‘paper over’ the document

The kids have been taken from Clayborne’s facet as she waited to bail Williams out of the county jail about six hours after the site visitors cease.

It was someday after the youngsters have been taken into state custody {that a} DCS legal professional filed the mandatory authorized paperwork. The time stamp on the petition was obscured, an extra step to cover that authorized paperwork had been filed after the youngsters had already been taken from their mom in violation of state regulation, the authorized filings mentioned.

“Presumably aware they had not followed any legal ‘process,’ the DCS Defendants immediately began to paper over the record to make it look like they had followed the law—when in fact they had not,” the go well with said.

The identical DCS legal professional continued to speak with the choose one-on-one in regards to the case, regardless of normal court docket guidelines that bar communications about an energetic case that don’t embody all events.

Weeks later, after the household’s then-attorney discovered in regards to the non-public communications between DCS and Perry, the DCS legal professional and the choose engaged in a sequence of late-night texts after 11 p.m. to debate learn how to avert a lawsuit, authorized filings mentioned.

The legal professional, who is just not named as a defendant within the lawsuit, was terminated by DCS in 2024 for her conduct in a separate case that concerned serving to a DCS caseworker submit a “sworn petition falsely alleging that a child was drug-exposed to justify” elimination of that youngster, the submitting mentioned.

U.S. District Judge Clifton Corker has but to rule on whether or not the brand new claims filed by Clayborne’s attorneys might go ahead.

Corker dominated in August that DCS caseworkers can be held liable for their conduct within the case, together with for claims they violated the household’s Fourth Amendment Constitutional protections towards illegal search and seizures and the household’s authorized claims of false arrest and false imprisonment.

The new filings additionally search so as to add extra DCS caseworkers and Coffee County officers concerned within the incident whose identities have been solely made recognized to the household after the preliminary lawsuit was filed.

The household is represented by outstanding Nashville civil rights attorneys Abby Rubenfeld, Tricia Herzfeld and Anthony Orlandi.

This story was first published by Tennessee Lookout.

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