Alabama: Tyree Lynette Hoyle, 36, resigned from her guard job with the state Department of Corrections (DOC) after her arrest for contraband smuggling on April 24, 2024. The Birmingham News reported that Hoyle allegedly met an unnamed fellow guard in November 2023 at the Montgomery Zoo, where she accepted three packages of marijuana and suboxone and agreed to mule them to an unidentified prisoner at Kilby Correctional Facility. She was booked into the Montgomery County Detention Center on a $30,000 bond. In another black eye for DOC, WSFA in Montgomery reported that contract guard Shemeria Jackson was arrested a week later on May 1, 2024, for allegedly smuggling contraband to an unnamed Fountain Correctional Facility prisoner. So what was it this time? A candy bar.

Alabama: Marshall County Jail guard Andrew Bailey, 18, was arrested on April 30, 2024, for allegedly smuggling THC vapes and tobacco to detainees at the lockup in Guntersville. Sheriff Phil Sims said that Bailey resigned and would be transferred after his bond hearing to a different lockup, according to a report by the Birmingham News. Less than a week later, on May 3, 2024, Cherokee County Sheriff Jeff Shaver announced that 58-year-old guard Omar Patterson was fired from the county Detention Center and arrested on a charge of promoting prison contraband. WBRC in Birmingham said that investigators found he was smuggling tobacco to detainees. Shaver called it “extremely disappointing.”

Alabama: Three Bullock Correctional Facility prisoners died in just five days, beginning on April 24, 2024. That’s when Christopher Rian McGhee, 32, was found unresponsive in his cell and transported to the prison health care unit, where efforts to resuscitate him failed. The same thing happened to Dustin Ortega, 39, on April 27, 2024, and then again to Clifton Leon King, 49, the following day. DOC’s Law Enforcement Services Division is investigating all three deaths.

Alabama: The U.S. Department of Justice said that former federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) guard Robert D. Smith, 39, was sentenced to two years in federal prison followed by 15 years of supervised release on May 23, 2024, for sexually abusing two prisoners at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Aliceville. As PLN reported, he was indicted in April 2023 on charges that he had sex with the prisoners, “T.M.” and “R.R.L,” who could not legally consent. [See: PLN, July 2023, p.63.] He then pleaded guilty on January 11, 2024.

California: After reportedly being found with fentanyl and other narcotics inside Pleasant Valley State Prison on April 29, 2024, guard Sgt. Greg Reinaldo Clark, 51, was arrested and charged with drug possession, transporting or selling narcotics, bringing drugs into a prison, possessing paraphernalia in a jail and unlawfully communicating with a prisoner, according to a report by the Fresno Bee. A 23-year-veteran of the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (CDCR), the former guard was booked into Fresno County Jail and freed on $80,200 bail.

California: Former CDCR guard Edwin Ferdinand was charged on May 7, 2024, with smuggling knives, tobacco, cellphones, chargers and even bottles of tequila into the state prison in Solano, CBS News reported. He worked there from February 2020 to September 2021; the circumstances around his departure were not reported. Working with a prisoner and an outside accomplice, both unnamed, Ferdinand allegedly muled the contraband in exchange for thousands of dollars in bribes. He was booked into the Sacramento County Jail.

California: KTLA in Los Angeles said that CDCR prisoner Raul Mendoza, 30, died on May 16, 2024, three days after he was violently attacked by fellow prisoners Andrew L. Espinoza, 29, and Frank Vasquez, 44, at Kern Valley State Prison. The attackers were placed in restrictive housing, and guards recovered two homemade weapons they allegedly used, but no motive has been announced for the killing. Mendoza had served eight years of an 11-year term for voluntary manslaughter. Espinoza has served 12 months of an 88-month term for carjacking. Vasquez was incarcerated for life without possibility of parole in 2016 for first-degree murder and second-degree robbery.

Canada: A proposed class-action lawsuit filed in British Columbia Supreme Court on April 15, 2024, seeks to hold the provincial government liable for nearly 200 sexual assaults by former jail guard Roderic David MacDougall on “younger” and “physically fit” men detained between 1976 and 1997. Penticton Western News reported that fellow jail employees reported concerns that MacDougall was sexually abusing detained young men as early as 1980. It was only after one victim filed a report in 1996 that MacDougall then resigned the next year. In 2000, he was sentenced to 43 months in jail after being convicted on multiple counts of sexual assault and related crimes against five former detainees. In 2002, the first of more than 200 suits by his victims was filed.

Connecticut: Although he admitted dishonestly collecting $86,648.08 in compensation from Connecticut for an injury suffered while working as a prison guard for the state DOC, Matthew Hubbard, 56, will likely face no prison time after his sentencing on April 26, 2024, according to WWLP in Springfield, Massachusetts. As PLN reported, Hubbard collected the benefits for a “temporary total disability” but continued working as a reserve police officer and a real estate agent in his hometown of Agawam, Massachusetts; that state’s Peace Officer Standards and Training Commission then suspended his certification as a police officer through June 2025, and Agawam said he no longer works for the town. [See: PLN, Nov. 29, 2022, online.] He was sentenced to three years in prison—one for each felony count to which he pleaded guilty—but the term was suspended pending completion of two years of probation, along with payment of restitution in an amount still to be determined.

Delaware: James T. Vaughn Correctional Center guard Jahee White, 31, was arrested on April 23, 2024, and charged with accepting bribes to smuggle drugs to prisoners, First State Update reported. Investigators from the state DOC, the FBI and the state Department of Justice were tipped off in March 2024, leading to White’s arrest on felony charges of official misconduct, bribery, conspiracy, weapons violations, possession with intent to deliver a counterfeit controlled substance and prompting prison contraband. He was booked into Howard R. Young Correctional Institution on a $95,000 cash bond.

Florida: Citing Jacksonville-Duvall Sheriff T.K. Waters, WJXT in Jacksonville reported on April 25, 2024, that 17 people had been arrested following a six-month smuggling investigation at the Duval County Jail, including former guard Kobe Collett. He had been removed from his job in October 2023 when he was nabbed in “Operation Snow Globe,” along with his sister, Elisha Hughes. Corey Copeland, a public works department employee, was also caught up in the sweep and arrested in January 2024 for dealing drugs to detainees on work crews he supervised. The other 14 people charged were jail detainees accused of trafficking fentanyl and other illicit drugs.

Florida: Former Leon County Jail guard Jennifer Adams, 35, pleaded no contest on March 26, 2024, to charges of committing sexual misconduct with an unnamed detainee at the jail. WCTV in Tallahassee reported that she was then sentenced to three years of probation and 200 hours of community service. State Attorney Jack Campbell also noted that she “won’t be eligible to work in corrections anymore.” Adams resigned in March 2023 after investigators began looking into her repeated requests for overtime in a jail pod where the detainee was held. At her June 2023 arrest, they also said that she smuggled contraband into the jail and left it in the trash for detainees to retrieve, but those charges were dropped as part of her plea deal. Shortly after her plea, on May 15, 2024, Volusia County Branch Jail guard Lt. Jonathan Harding, 43, was arrested after he admitted having sex with an unnamed detainee and bringing her restricted items, including cough medicine and a Chipotle burrito. The Daytona Beach News Journal said he also admitted giving her his cellphone. In less than two weeks after the detainee arrived at the jail on May 2, 2024, the pair exchanged 1,159 text messages, investigators found, including one thread discussing concerns that a detainee in a neighboring cell may have heard them having sex. After that, Harding put in a work order to repair an allegedly broken sink in the cell of his paramour. He was placed on administrative leave pending trial on felony counts of sexual misconduct, unlawful use of a two-way communication device and introduction of contraband.

Florida: Former BOP guard Robert Jason Headley, 43, was found guilty of vehicular homicide on May 9, 2024. An un-incarcerated local, Robert Neely, 68, was killed in a head-on car crash with Headley as the guard raced down the wrong side of the highway toward his shift at the Federal Correctional Complex in Coleman in April 2018. Unsurprisingly, the Villages-News reported that the jury also found Headley guilty of driving under the influence. State police said that a hospital blood draw tested positive for oxycodone. It was unclear when or how Headley’s BOP ended employment.

Florida: Former BOP guard Kerontrez Lamar Kenon, 22, was indicted on May 9, 2024, on charges that he had sex with an unnamed prisoner—which is prohibited by law—while working at FCI-Tallahassee, Gulf Live reported. The abuse allegedly occurred between June and August 2023. It was unclear when his employment with BOP ended. If convicted, he faces up to 15 years in federal prison.

Georgia: State prisoner Jacob Henson, 31, was shot dead by a guard on April 23, 2024, after he allegedly took a second guard’s pepper spray and overpowered him with it. Neither guard was named. The state Bureau of Investigation (GBI) said that the incident took place at Washington County Regional Medical Center, where Henson had been taken for treatment after being stabbed in a fight with another prisoner, who was also unnamed, at Washington State Prison. Henson then got in an altercation with the guard whose pepper spray he swiped before the other guard shot and killed him. He was serving an eight-year term for a 2018 car theft spree.

Georgia: Former Sumter County Detention Center guard Yakeema Shantrell Mercer, 41, was arrested on May 20, 2024, for allegedly conspiring to smuggle drugs into the lockup, WALB in Albany reported. It was unclear when or how her employment ended. Deputies of Sheriff Eric D. Bryant also charged an alleged accomplice, detainee Camry Kemarurius May, moving him to another lockup to continue awaiting trial on prior murder charges. A second accused accomplice, Quintavious Lamontae Williams, was already on probation and considered at large. Mercer posted bond and was released from the jail. Days later on May 23, 2024, Bryant fired and arrested another guard, Carrie Joiner, when she turned herself in to face charges of improper sexual conduct and violation of oath of office. She was released on an undisclosed bond.

Hawaii: Less than 10 minutes after he escaped from Kauai Community Correctional Center on March 29, 2024, prisoner Matthew J. Ornellas, 33, was found in a roadside ditch just outside the prison grounds, after he had apparently been hit by a hit and run driver. The Honolulu Star Advertiser said that the prisoner later died of his injuries. The driver and vehicle that struck him have yet to be located. Officials with the state Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR) said that Ornellas scaled a perimeter fence strung with razor wire around 1 a.m. Guards gave chase but lost him in the dark and dense brush surrounding the site. Shortly after that, they heard the collision and found him. Ornellas, a minimum-custody prisoner serving a sentence for a drug-related conviction, was transported to a hospital and died later that day.

Indiana: WGN in Chicago reported that a guard at Westville Correctional Facility in nearby Indiana was charged on April 23, 2024, with taking $3,000 in bribes to smuggle contraband to prisoners. Another guard noticed on April 11, 2024, that Ashley Watson, 30, was wearing a smart watch, in violation of state DOC policy. When questioned, Watson said that she “left [the] iron on” at home, apparently meaning she could check the home using the banned watch. The device was then searched and revealed that she had received $1,000 via cash app from a prisoner five days earlier, plus another $2,000 from a prisoner’s mother that same day. Watson admitted taking the money but told investigators that she planned not to deliver the prisoners anything in exchange, adding: “What are they gonna do?” She was jailed on a $15,000 bond, which was later reduced to $1,500.

Indiana: Allan County Jail detainees Brian Boggs and Taylor Hunt were charged on May 4, 2024, in the overdose death of fellow detainee Steven Matthew Perry, Jr. the previous February. WANE in Fort Wayne said that Boggs and Hunt were implicated when investigators reviewed jail surveillance video, and other detainees confirmed that the two were selling fentanyl in the lockup; Perry reportedly paid them for the fentanyl with six bags of chips and six cups of noodles. Boggs is charged with dealing meth and cocaine at the jail. Hunt was hit with a parole violation for possessing meth and a gun. He persuaded Allen Superior Court Magistrate Samuel Keirns to let him represent himself at trial. Meanwhile Boggs refused to attend his scheduled court appearance on May 29, 2024.

Kentucky: Lexington Community Corrections guard Sgt. Netoria Campbell, 39, was arrested on narcotics trafficking charges in Oklahoma’s Canadian County on April 24, 2024, according to WDKY in Lexington. A 12-year veteran guard at the combined Lexington-Fayette County lockup, she was placed on unpaid leave pending the outcome of her out-of-state case.

Kentucky: Four days after escaping from Henderson County Detention Center, detainee Tylee Thompson, 33, was still on the run on January 30, 2024, according to WEHT/WTVW in nearby Evansville, Indiana. He was being held on warrants out of his hometown, Cincinnati, when he was “doing some duties for the jail” and “knew of an opening,” Kentucky State Police Trooper Corey King said. By that he meant that the detainee was collecting jail trash and used a trash can to pin a deputy to a wall before running away while taking out the refuse he’d collected. Henderson Police turned over the search to U.S. Marshals.

Kentucky: Former Campbell Regional Juvenile Detention Center guard Neil Moorman, 30, was taken into custody on May 28, 2024, after initially failing to appear at his arraignment in state court a week earlier to face charges he sexually abused teen girls detained at the lockup. WXIX in Cincinnati said that State Police were investigating a rape at one Kentucky juvenile detention center and teens having sex at another when they first suspected Moorman of groping detainees and engaging in oral sex with them. He was fired weeks later in June 2023.

Kentucky: After his sister taped contraband under a handrail for Three Forks Regional Jail detainee Tommy McIntosh, 44, to pick up at the Estill County Courthouse on May 16, 2024, she got nervous and sent an accomplice to retrieve it. WDKY in Lexington reported that Lee County deputies then caught Bradley Morrison with a bag of tobacco and suspected meth, quickly nabbing McIntosh’s sister, too. Sabrina Olinger, 49, then confessed to the plot, they said. She and Morrison joined McIntosh at the jail on trafficking charges, with Morrison’s bond set at $2,500 and Olinger’s at $2,000. County Sheriff Joseph Lucas credited jail guards for discovering the scheme in monitored calls.

Louisiana: Jefferson Parish Jail guard Curtis Lumar, 42, was arrested on May 9, 2024, on charges that he fraudulently took more than $80,000 in compensation for overtime hours at the lockup that he never actually worked. WVUE in New Orleans said that the guard allegedly logged over 2,000 bogus hours on his timesheets in just six months. Capt. Jason Rivarde, a spokesperson for the office of Sheriff Joseph P. Lopinto, III, blamed a high number of vacant positions at the lockup for the failure of jail leaders to question such substantial overtime sooner. As he noted, Lopinto ordered all guards to serve one mandatory overtime shift per week in 2021, though that has since been made voluntary. Lumar, a nine-year veteran guard, was booked into the jail in Gretna and released on a $50,000 bond.

Michigan: Former Isabella County Jail guard Christopher Cluely, 48, pleaded no contest on April 29, 2024, to charges of aggravated assault and willful neglect of duty for shoving an unnamed detainee in April 2020, causing him to fall and break his kneecap. WJRT in Flint reported that Cluely was also accused of lying about the incident in his official report. At sentencing in June 2024, he got one year of probation, agreeing to take anger management and forfeit future guard work..

Michigan: Former Clair County Jail guard Jake Tessner, 53, was in state court on May 10, 2024, to be arraigned a second time for sexually assaulting an unnamed detainee. WJRT in Flint said that Tessner was fired when the first charge was filed in March 2024 for an assault on another unnamed detainee. It was her January 2024 accusation that prompted Sheriff John Wilson to open an investigation, leading to a charge of second-degree criminal sexual conduct against the guard. To that has now been added a more serious charge of third-degree criminal sexual conduct.

Michigan: Former state DOC guard Aaron Ray Fetters, 29, was sentenced to 16 years in federal prison on May 9, 2024, for the “years long” sexual abuse of an unnamed minor girl, who was also among the victims—some as young as infants—filmed in kiddie porn that he distributed. When those films surfaced in 2022, authorities traced them to Fetters and discovered the rest of his crimes against the victim, the U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Eastern District of Michigan said. Fetters worked as a guard at G. Robert Cotton Correctional Facility as recently as 2019.

Nevada: KTNV in Las Vegas said that Clark County Detention Center guard LaWayne Hardiman was fired and arrested on May 14, 2024, after he allegedly tried to smuggle a cellphone to a state prisoner who was held at the lockup. State DOC Director James Dzurenda said that Hardiman was caught during a statewide crackdown on contraband in prisons and jails. He was charged with bribery of a public official and attempting to furnish a cell phone to a state prisoner.

New Jersey: Atlantic County Jail guard Christopher Piccioni, 33, was charged on May 21, 2024, with taking bribes to smuggle tobacco and “K2” synthetic marijuana to a detainee, NJ Advance Media reported. The since-released detainee, Dion Robinson, 39, and an alleged unincarerated accomplice, Qydreia Smith, 40, were also charged in the scheme. County Executive Director Dennis Levinson said that Piccioni had been suspended but didn’t know whether he was still being paid. It was also unclear if any of the three was taken into custody.

New York: Albany County Sheriff Craig Apple shared a photo on his department’s Facebook page on March 20, 2024, showing two black balloons and razor blades they held, which guards at the county jail pulled from the rectum of prisoner Dontay Sawyer as he tried to smuggle them into the lockup on his return from a court hearing. The Daily Voice said the contraband was found with the jail’s body scanners. Sawyer, who had just pleaded guilty to a weapons charge, will now face smuggling charges, too, Apple said. The detainee apparently didn’t hear about two others busted the previous year when the jail’s then-newly installed body-scanners revealed contraband in their rectums. On January 12, 2023, guards found a trove in the butt of Messiah Lamb, 25, including tobacco, marijuana, matches, match strikers and four ceramic razor blades. The day before that, the scanners revealed that Dahmeek J. Mcdonald, 28, had hidden marijuana, suboxone and morphine sulfate in his rectum.

New York: In New York City on April 18, 2024, Rikers Island detainee Tymirh Bey-Foster, 21, was charged with punching out a guard. The New York Post said he was being held on gang-related murder charges when he left his cell on April 7, 2024, and the guard locked it. Though that is jail policy, the detainee became “irate” and punched the guard in the face, causing her to hit her head against a wall and briefly knocking her unconscious.

Ohio: When his trial for reckless homicide and involuntary manslaughter ended on April 24, 2024, Mark D. Cooper, 57, the only Richland County Jail guard charged in the fatal 2019 suffocation of detainee Alexander Rios, 28, was found not guilty. The jury verdict was reached in Cooper’s second trial, WOIO in Cleveland said; the first ended in mistrial in November 2023. As PLN reported, Rios’ family accepted a $4 million settlement for his death, which occurred after jail Sgt. Jamaal O’Dell ordered the detainee held in a booking cell for suicide prevention; hours later, when he grew agitated and Cooper with four other guards entered his cell to place him in a restraint chair, Rios ran past them and around the booking area before the guards kneed and Tasered him—and Cooper stood atop his back with his full 250-pound weight, bouncing up and down until Rios lost consciousness for the last time. [See: PLN, Oct. 2022, p.60.] Family attorney J.C. Ratliff is also trying to get the cause on Rios’ death certificate changed to homicide from “excited delirium,” the discredited diagnosis that was listed by county coroner Dan Burwell.

Ohio: Fired Cuyahoga County Jail guard Keonte Calhoun, 31, was charged with drug trafficking, drug possession and illegal conveyance on April 26, 2024. He is accused of muling synthetic marijuana to former detainee Quincy Pucci from an un-incarcerated accomplice, Kimberly Carnegie, not long before another unnamed detainee suffered a drug-related medical emergency on September 19, 2023. Pucci and Carnegie were also charged in the indictment unsealed in state Court of Common Pleas, the Cleveland Plain Dealer reported. Sheriff Harold Pretel fired Calhoun on November 10, 2023, for failing to render aid to the sickened detainee.

Oklahoma: It wasn’t a riot, insisted the state DOC, but a “group disturbance” that left two unnamed Lawton Correctional Facility prisoners dead on May 10, 2024, KOKH in Oklahoma City reported. The lockup is operated under contract by The GEO Group, which blamed “human error” for allowing prisoners in rival “security threat groups” too close together, sparking the deadly confrontation. No human behind the error was named, nor were the gangs involved. After state Rep. Justin Humphrey (R-Dist.19), Chair of the House Committee on Criminal Justice and Corrections, called the violence a “mini riot,” DOC Chief of Public Relations Kay Thompson shot back that he “lacks an understanding of precisely what constitutes a riot” and “continues to misrepresent the truth to fit his self-serving narratives.” However, Humphrey was merely responding to DOC’s own initial reports that the violence involved 30 prisoners, before revising the number down to just three. Humphrey also pointed out that two unnamed prisoners involved in an assault were hospitalized the previous week, when yet another unnamed prisoner was reportedly stabbed at Allen G. Gamble Correctional Facility. DOC took over that prison in 2023 from its former private operator, CoreCivic, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, June 2024, p.10.]

Pennsylvania: The Shamokin News Item reported that former Northumberland County Jail deputy warden David Allen McCoy, 64, pleaded guilty on May 3, 2024, to misdemeanor reckless endangerment of his girlfriend at home two years before. As PLN reported, McCoy was drunk and uncooperative when he was arrested on May 2, 2022, after he allegedly put a gun to Tracy Feese’s head; responding Locust Township police then found a loaded .22 semi-automatic pistol after she directed them to the saddlebags of his motorcycle. [See: PLN, July 2022, p.63.] A separate charge of making terroristic threats was not prosecuted. On the same day, McCoy also pleaded guilty to felony criminal mischief for taking someone else’s truck without permission in July 2023 and getting it stuck in a creek. Misdemeanor counts not prosecuted from that incident included unauthorized use of a motor vehicle, misuse of property and waters and operating a vehicle in a stream.

Pennsylvania: After drugs were found in detainees’ cells at Clinton County Correctional Facility on March 30, 2024, an investigation led authorities to guard Adryan Lynn Selleck, 27, who confessed on April 28, 2024, to smuggling contraband on three occasions. NorthCentralPA reported that the trove of contraband included marijuana, methamphetamine, Suboxone and bath salts concealed within a tube. An unnamed detainee then fingered Selleck, who began cooperating with investigators on April 18, 2024. He posted a $75,000 surety bond to guarantee his appearance at an arraignment scheduled for late June 2024.

South Carolina: The state DOC issued an arrest warrant on May 2, 2024, for Timothy Donald Hicks, 57, after determining that he dropped off a package containing 15 grams of meth for an unnamed prisoner to recover at Camille Graham Correctional Institution in January 2023. According to WYFF in Greenville, the lockup houses women with special needs aged 17 and over. Investigators intercepted a call Hicks made in which the prisoner provided detailed instructions for the drop. His arrest warrant does not identify the exact location of the drop, only that it was “in a conspicuous place available to inmates.”

South Carolina: Former BOP guard Ashlee Richardson-Barley, 34, was sentenced on May 16, 2024, to one year and a day in federal prison for taking bribes to smuggle contraband into

FCI-Estill. The USAO for the District of South Carolina said that she admitted taking $15,700 from prisoners to mule cellphones, cigarettes, cannabis and suboxone into the lockup starting in November 2019 into April 2020, when the prison was largely destroyed by an intense tornado, forcing BOP to move most prisoners to other lockups, primarily in Pennsylvania. A satellite camp on the site was renovated and transitioned from housing male prisoners to holding female prisoners after new Director Colette Peters took over BOP in August 2022.

South Carolina: On May 20, 2024, the state DOC fired and arrested guard Angel Monique Butler, 23, for allegedly failing to report a sexual relationship she knew about between a fellow guard and a prisoner at McCormick Correctional Institution. No names were provided for the couple, but WRDW/WAGT in nearby Augusta, Georgia, reported that DOC fired and arrested another guard at the lockup, Jaiona Zyrelle Finney, 24, on April 15, 2024, after she admitted exchanging texts with an unnamed prisoner and having sex with him on a prison recreation field in January and February 2024.

Tennessee: An alleged drug-running operation was busted at the Hamilton County Jail on May 3, 2024, resulting in charges for five detainees accused of bonding out one of them who then succeeded in getting himself rearrested in a scheme to smuggle contraband into the lockup. Once returned to the jail, he tried to sneak contraband that guards intercepted, including “suspected blue Fentanyl, 6 Suboxone strips, 35 strips of Toon Paper (papers laced with THC), [and] some blue powder suspected to be Fentanyl,” plus “approximately 20 blue Fentanyl pills,” according to the office of Sheriff Austin Garrett. Warrants for conspiracy to introduce contraband into a penal facility, as well as possession of both fentanyl and suboxone for resale, were issued for detainees Brian Stone, Diamond Smith, Kelsey Gray, Justin Finley and Wendy Hughes.

Tennessee: The USAO for the Western District of Tennessee said that former state DOC guard Javian Griffin, 38, was sentenced on May 8, 2024, to three years in federal prison and three years of supervised release for using excessive force on a Northwest Correctional Complex prisoner in June 2020 and then lying about in his official report in an attempted cover-up. As PLN reported, Griffin pleaded guilty in October 2023, the same month that former fellow guard Sebron Hollands, 33, confessed to writing his own false report about the incident; Hollands then got 15 months in federal prison and two years of supervised release in February 2024. [See: PLN, Apr. 2024, p.61.]

Texas: Former state Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ) guard Robert Vincent Earsley, 43, was arrested on April 18, 2024, and charged with bribery and possessing a prohibited item in a correctional facility. Citing TDCJ sources, KVIH in Amarillo reported that the four-year veteran guard had resigned in December 2022 when investigators found he had taken payment the month before from two unnamed and unincarerated men to smuggle a cellphone to a Clements Unit prisoner, who was also unnamed. Earlsley was freed on a $15,000 bond.

Texas: Tarrant County Sheriff Bill Weybourne fired two county jail guards and released video on May 16, 2024, of the death a month before of detainee Anthony Johnson, Jr., 31. According to the Fort Worth Star-Telegram, that showed Johnson was already on his stomach and handcuffed behind his back after a brief struggle with guards on April 21, 2024, when guard Rafael Moreno violated jail policy by kneeling on the restrained detainee’s back. Moreno was fired for that, and supervising guard Lt. Joel Garcia was fired for failing to supervise him, Weybourne said. Johnson, who wheezed “I can’t breathe” before losing consciousness the last time, died later that day. His family had called deputies two days earlier when he suffered a schizophrenic episode but was turned away from a state hospital that told them Johnson wasn’t violent enough to admit.

Vermont: Former state prison guard David Orvis, 28, was issued a misdemeanor citation on May 10, 2024, for allegedly helping to smuggle tobacco into Marble Valley Regional Correctional Facility, VT Digger reported. Orvis resigned from the state DOC as the investigation got underway which led to the charge against him. State police said that he “coordinated with at least two separate incarcerated individuals to transport contraband, specifically tobacco” into the prison, allegedly receiving electronic payments as bribes in return. No alleged co-conspirators were named, though.

West Virginia: BOP guard Cody Adam Bays, 32, got an 18-month federal prison term followed by three years of supervised release when he was sentenced on May 16, 2024, for taking more than $20,000 in bribes to smuggle suboxone, marijuana, synthetic marijuana and tobacco to an unnamed prisoner at FCI-Beckley. Quoting prosecutors, WCHS in Charleston said that the scheme ran from November 2022 to February 2023, when Bays sampled some fentanyl that he was attempting to smuggle and accidentally overdosed.

Wisconsin: Former DOC guard Justin Mahar, 32, was sentenced to a three-year prison term on May 23, 2024, for smuggling drugs into Green Bay Correctional Institution, the Green Bay Press Gazette reported. He had pleaded no contest in November 2023 to conspiracy to smuggle cocaine; an additional charge for smuggling THC was dismissed. Fellow guards conducting a strip search of an unnamed prisoner in December 2021 found 46 baggies with a total of 31 grams of marijuana, which the prisoner said retailed in the lockup for $100 each. Another prisoner found with more marijuana and a smuggled cellphone then fingered Mahar, who was nabbed in a sting when he accepted a $1,500 payment that an informant delivered to his home.

Zimbabwe: After his wife got a degree and demanded a divorce because he was “no longer my class,” Karoi Prison guard Vengai Karani fatally hanged himself, New Zimbabwe reported on May 19, 2024. The dead man was also reportedly struggling to repay about $2,500 USD he borrowed to finance his wife’s education. She was not named, nor was the college that awarded her degree. Her husband’s death reflects mental health concerns for guards and other first responders whose job stress has been compounded by 500% annual inflation. To combat that, the nation rolled out a new gold-backed currency, the Zig, in May 2024. The country’s Prisons and Correctional Services offered no comment on Karani’s death.

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