by Douglas Ankney
In an amended complaint filed in federal court for the Western District of Virginia on January 19, 2024, the former warden of Marion Correctional Treatment Center (MCTC) was added to the list of Defendants being sued by the surviving sister of an intellectually disabled prisoner fatally beaten by guards.
The filing by Kymberly Hobbs came three months after a grand jury refused to indict MCTC guards Joshua Caleb Jackson, William Zachary Montgomery, Samuel Dale Osbourne, Gregory Scott Plummer and Sgt. Anthony Raymond Kelly for killing her brother, Charles James Givens, 52, on February 5, 2022.
Givens was incarcerated for fatally shooting home health nurse Misty Leann Garrett, 22, in 2010. Due to his intellectual disability—he had the mental capacity of a child aged 7 or 8, the result of a childhood tumble down the stairs—he was housed at MCTC with other “prisoners with mental-­health issues and/or limited intellectual development,” the complaint continued. He also suffered from Crohn’s disease, one of the “complex medical reasons” that the complaint faults for Givens’ soiling himself.
But Defendant MCTC guards said that he “defecated on himself intentionally,” Hobbs’ complaint recalled; and because of Givens’ “inability to promptly decipher and follow [their] commands,” they allegedly “retaliated against and abused him in a variety of demeaning ways.” In MCTC’s medical unit in October 2018, guards removed all toilet paper from Givens’ cell. Instead of reprimanding them, a supervisor notified of this mistreatment allegedly joined in the retaliation and transferred Givens to “the hole”—solitary confinement.
Documented Physical Abuse
Between October 14, 2014, and his death, “there are over a dozen times when documents indicate” Givens was physically abused, Hobbs alleged. Givens complained that Sgt. R. Johnson beat him that month in the shower, which conveniently had no surveillance cameras; prisoners called this “being taken to the office.” Records from the hospital and MCTC medical personnel reveal that Givens was beaten in the shower by guards with bars of soap, leaving him with bruised hips and bruised, discolored fingers. After he was scalded in the shower by guards in April 2018, a nurse photographed the injuries, including blisters on his penis.
Givens was hospitalized for hypothermia at least five times in the year before his death because, after soiling himself, guards allegedly showered him with cold water in the winter and left him in a cell with opened windows he couldn’t close. Hospital records revealed his body temperature was as low as 87°F upon admittance. Medical records also noted that he was treated for lacerations to his face and a black eye, after he said a guard kicked him in the head.
On the morning of Givens’ death, according to the Hobbs’ complaint, Jackson, Montgomery, Plummer and Osbourne escorted him to the shower room after he defecated on himself. While Jackson and Montgomery dumped cold water on Givens, Plummer snapped a wet towel at the prisoner’s genitals. Kelly stayed in the hallway, stepping inside several times to violently punch Givens in the ribs and torso. The four chided Osbourne for not participating.
Surveillance video showed the guards returning a “slumped over” Givens to his cell after the beating. His request for medical attention was denied. An hour later he was dead. The beating was observed by a prisoner who later reported details, but when Virginia State Police (VSP) Special Agent Heath Seagle attempted to interview him, the witness refused to discuss it. After Seagle left, Warden Jeffrey Artrip reportedly chided the witness, “Why didn’t you tell him that you didn’t see anything?”
When Artrip notified Hobbs of Givens’ death, he attributed it to natural causes. But another prisoner told a relative about Givens’ beating, and that relative then informed Hobbs. The prisoner witness was subsequently charged with institutional offenses that VSP later said were bogus and intended to impede the investigation. Meanwhile, the first prisoner witness was abruptly transferred to Bland Correctional Center, where he provided VSP details of the assault that were confirmed by an autopsy finding that Givens died from blunt force trauma to the torso that cracked his ribs, lacerated his spleen and caused massive internal bleeding. In a subsequent polygraph examination at VSP Headquarters in Wytheville, Examiner Travis Sykes reported that the witness “achieved the second highest truthfulness score ever obtained at that facility.”
Legal Challenge Survives a Dismissal Motion
Hobbs filed her complaint pursuant to 42 U.S.C. § 1983 accusing the guards of killing Givens; her amended complaint added Artrip and guard Cpt. Travis S. Poston as additional Defendants, who allegedly knew of their subordinates’ abusive behavior but failed to discipline them, train them or intervene when they attacked the prisoner. On May 19, 2023, the Court agreed that Osbourne “had a duty under Virginia law to protect Givens” and denied a motion to dismiss him from Hobbs’s state-­law claim for gross negligence, by his failure to intervene in the savage beating. See: Hobbs v. Kelly, 2023 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 88046 (W.D. Va.).
Kelly is no longer employed by the state Department of Corrections (DOC), though spokesperson Carla Miles refused to say whether he was fired. Jackson was promoted to caseworker. Plummer, Montgomery and Osborne remain on suspension. Artrip is now Warden of Wallens Ridge State Prison. Though none of the Defendants was criminally charged, the FBI opened an investigation, according to Hobbs. Tellingly, DOC also refuses “to turn over dozens of pages of documents” in response to an AP News public records request about “uncomfortably cold temperatures at the prison, non-­functioning or poorly functioning heating systems, as well as windows left open during cold months.”
Hobbs is represented by attorneys with the Krudys Law Firm PLC in Richmond and the Jackson Law Group PLLC in Wytheville, as well as C. Paul Stanley III, another Wytheville attorney. The case is scheduled for trial in March 2025, and PLN will update developments as they are available. See: Hobbs v. Kelly, USDC (W.D. Va.), Case No. 1:23-­cv-­00003.   

Additional sources: NPR News, Richmond Times-­Dispatch

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