For Beating Handcuffed Prisoners, Former Alabama Guard Supervisor Gets 87 Months
On December 19, 2023, the federal court for the Northern District of Alabama sentenced former state prison guard supervisor Mohammad Jenkins, 52, to seven years and three months in federal prison for assaulting two handcuffed prisoners at William E. Donaldson Correctional Facility. As PLN reported, Jenkins pleaded guilty in September 2023 to pepper-spraying the restrained prisoners, one of whom later died after the guard emptied the cannister and beat him in the head with it—and threw the prisoner’s own shoe at him after that—in February 2022. [See: PLN, Nov. 2023, p.46.]
Over an 18-year career with the state Department of Corrections (DOC), Jenkins rose through the guard ranks to lieutenant and shift commander, despite being named in 16 lawsuits filed by prisoners who alleged similar brutality to that visited on Russo and the second prisoner; identified as “D.H.,” he was hosed in the face by Jenkins with “Cell Buster” concentrated pepper spray in November 2021. An off-duty domestic violence charge in 2007 was not prosecuted when Jenkins produced documentation of a deployment to Iraq with the U.S. Marines—documentation that he later pleaded guilty to forging, getting a two-year probated sentence. He might have skated from liability for Russo’s death, too; DOC blamed that on a fall that the prisoner’s cellmate said never happened. Before he died, Russo was also found guilty on trumped-up disciplinary charges that it was he who assaulted the guard and had a knife, too.
However, between the assault on February 16, 2022, and Russo’s death seven days later, the prisoner managed to get a letter mailed to his mother that identified the surveillance cameras which captured the beat-down. When those videos were reviewed, investigators watched as Jenkins repeatedly entered Russo’s cell to assault him multiple times, stopping for rest breaks in between, giving the lie to the guard’s blameless incident report. A month after its initial statement that Russo died accidentally, DOC reversed itself and arrested Jenkins, who then resigned.
At sentencing, Jenkins apologized to his family—but not his victims. Chief Judge L. Scott Coogler noted there was no evidence connecting Jenkins to Russo’s death, ignoring protestations from prosecutors that a hasty autopsy preceded DOC’s initial lie calling the death accidental. The judge also took pity on Jenkins’ claims that he suffered PTSD. From the surveillance video, Coogler added, the 160-pound prisoner looked like he was walking “fine” after his beat-down by the 260-pound guard. “I have seen far worse assaults in prison by prison guards,” the judge told Jenkins. “Yours just happened to be caught on video.” See: United States v. Jenkins, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 2:23-cr-00030.
Jenkins’ callous brutality underscores the “frequent uses of excessive force” which the federal Department of Justice found when it investigated DOC prisons in 2020, leading to a suit filed that year alleging unconstitutional conditions, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Apr. 2021, p.34.] Rather than remedy those, the state has lawyered up to fight back; on October 31, 2023, DOC convinced the same Court to allow inspection of four federal Bureau of Prisons lockups, apparently building a defense along the lines “I know you are, but what am I.” See: United States v. Alabama, USDC (N.D. Ala.), Case No. 2:20-cv-01971.With credulous judges like Coogler, it might work, too.
Additional sources: Birmingham News, Moth to Flame, USA Today
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