On Tuesday, July 17, at approximately 8:00 AM, Defendant Officer Scherr arrived at the funeral home where he was told the ashes would be located and attempted to gain possession of the ashes from the funeral home director, to the exclusion of Jennie.

The funeral director refused to release Liza's ash remains to Defendant Officer Scherr. The inability to gain possession of Liza's ash remains angered, enraged and incensed Defendant Officer Scherr.

The record does not indicate the nature of the religious controversy between Jennifer and her father-in-law, and the lawyers were not able to enlighten us on the subject at the oral argument.

On either the second or the third day after the funeral, Curtis, together with a fellow police officer, codefendant Ruben Briones (an officer assigned to the police department's Narcotics Division), prepared an affidavit in support of an application to a state court for a warrant to search Jennifer's house for illegal drugs. The affidavit, based entirely on information supplied by Curtis, stated that on the sixteenth (the day after the funeral) he had observed 50 marijuana plants in Jennifer's basement. Although her last name and his last name—which are identical—are in the affidavit, the affidavit contains no other indication of a relationship between them.

A Cook County judge approved the application for a search warrant and issued the warrant on June 19, and on the same day (which remember was only the fourth day after the funeral), between twelve and fifteen DEA officers descended on Jennifer's home to search for marijuana. They found none. She is not a dealer or an addict and so had discarded the marijuana plants upon her daughter's death. She was not arrested and no criminal proceedings were brought against her. Instead she brought this suit against the two officers and the City.

Curtis's behavior, which culminated in the DEA's search of his daughter-in-law's house, was, if it was as the complaint describes it, atrocious. And if he knew, when he submitted it in support of the application for a search warrant, that there was no longer any marijuana in his daughter-in-law's house, the issuance of the search warrant was based on a knowingly false assertion of probable cause for the search, and Jennifer's Fourth Amendment rights were violated under the principle of Franks v. Delaware, 438 U.S. 154 (1978). But there is no allegation that when the warrant was applied for he knew she'd discarded the marijuana plants. And at the time there was no medicinal exception in Illinois to the prohibition of possessing marijuana, as there is now, 410 ILCS 130/1 et seq. Moreover, there was and still is no medicinal exception to the federal law against possession of marijuana (even simple possession, with no intent to distribute), 21 U.S.C. § 844, and the fact that the search was conducted by DEA agents suggests a possible federal interest in Jennifer's marijuana plants. The affidavit states that Curtis saw the plants in Jennifer's basement three days before he signed the affidavit, and as far as we know that is true.

A more promising road on which the plaintiff took not even the first step would have been to sue Curtis Scherr (and perhaps Officer Briones as well) in an Illinois state court under Illinois state law for intentional infliction of emotional distress, Public Finance Corp. v. Davis, 360 N.E.2d 765, 767 (Ill.1976), or alternatively to join such a claim with her federal claim in her federal suit, thus invoking the district court's supplemental state-law jurisdiction, 28 U.S.C. § 1367. There is little doubt (always assuming the truth of the allegations in the complaint) that Curtis Scherr intended to inflict severe emotional distress on his daughter-in-law and succeeded in doing so. Public Finance Corp. v.. Davis, supra, and Doe v. Calumet City, 641 N.E.2d 498, 506–09 (Ill.1994), both suits similar to the present one, suggest that Jennifer could have prevailed in such a suit against him. This case thus illustrates a tendency for some victims of police abuse to bring hopeless federal suits even when they have plausible state law remedies.

To wrap up, the Fourth Amendment case against Curtis Scherr, and even more clearly against the other officer, Ruben Briones, was rightly dismissed, and likewise the claim against the City, which was derivative of the claims against the officers. The judgment is therefore

Affirmed.

POSNER, Circuit Judge.