Downward Departure Sentenced for Florida Guard Convicted in Beating Prisoners Vacated

by David Reutter

In vacating the sentences of two former Florida prison guards convicted of violating prisoners’ civil rights and obstruction of justice, the Eleventh Circuit Court of Appeals held that downward variances of more than 90% from the sentencing guidelines in such cases is unreasonable.

PLN previously reported the convictions of Sgt. Alexander McQueen and guards Stephen Dawkins and Guruba Griffin. McQueen was convicted of conspiring to violate prisoners’ civil rights; he and Dawkins were convicted of filing a false report in order to obstruct justice. Griffin’s jury was unable to reach a verdict, and following a mistrial, he pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor for willfully depriving one prisoner of a right secured by the Constitution.

The factual events concerned events at the South Florida Reception Center (SFRC). The guards had staged fights and beat prisoners with broken broomsticks. At sentencing, the district court viewed the “need to avoid unwarranted sentence disparities among defendants with similar records who have been found guilty of similar conduct” as critical.

Griffin’s plea placed him at jeopardy of serving more than one year in prison. By contrast, the sentencing guidelines called for sentences between 12 and 15 months for McQueen and fifteen to twenty-one months for Dawkins. The court based its departure downward from the guidelines upon its desire to avoid disparity for “similarity situated” defendants.

The court imposed a sentence of one year upon McQueen and one month for Dawkins. Griffin also received a one-year sentence. The government cross-appealed after McQueen and Dawkins appealed.

While the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions, it found the sentences received by McQueen and Dawkins “are substantively unreasonable because they are wholly insufficient to achieve the purposes of sentencing set forth by Congress.” The actions of the defendants as prison guards were “particularly serious,” and “McQueen’s conduct as a ranking law enforcement officer was egregious,” wrote the court.

It noted that McQueen “wantonly attacked a young and injured prisoner with a broken broomstick and slammed the prisoner (face first) when the [prisoner] refused to answer the officers’ questions.” He then forced two prisoners to box and he choked one of those prisoners when he begged for the fight to end. He also beat at least three other prisoners with the brook stick, “leaving welts and bruises that remained days after the beatings.”

McQueen then filed a false report and lied about injuries suffered by prisoner Marvin Woods. Dawkins failed to report the beatings and filed a “flagrantly false report that failed to mention any of the violence that pervaded the youthful offender wing” At SFRC.

The court noted that violence in prisons is easily undetected and unpunished, as evidenced by only one prisoner out of over two dozen being the only one to speak out. “The ability to unearth the crimes” by guards “is particularly difficult, and as we see it, the extraordinary lenient sentences in this case sap the goal of general deterrence.”

Finally, it was noted that Griffin was convicted of a misdemeanor after a jury failed to find guilty, and McQueen and Dawkins were convicted by a jury of felonies. In other such cases, courts have imposed far higher sentences than those at issue here.

As such, the Eleventh Circuit affirmed the convictions but reversed the sentences and remanded for resentencing. In December 2013, Dawkins was sentenced to time served and two years on supervised release, while McQueen received time served and three years’ supervised release. See: United States v. McQueen, 727 F.3d 1144 (11th Cir. 2013).

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