by David M. Reutter
Before he retired in July 2023, Warden Thomas Bergami was sent by the Bureau of Prisons (BOP) to the U.S. Penitentiary (USP) in Thomson, Illinois, with a mandate: Clean the place up. But Begami said he got little support for his reform efforts and was in fact actively opposed by guards—some of whom even goaded prisoners to assault him.
The latter claim was first made in a handwritten letter from 14 prisoners that arrived at prison nonprofit advocacy The Marshall Project (TMP) in late December 2022, headed “THIS IS AN EMERGENCY ISSUE!!!” The prisoners who wrote it said that guards angered by Bergami’s reform efforts attempted to bribe them to attack him and one of his captains, offering to “poorly tighten their hand restraints” during the warden’s walk-through so that they could slip free and assault him.
As PLN reported, USP-Thomson inherited the Special Management Unit (SMU) from USP-Lewisburg in Pennsylvania in 2018, while a lawsuit was pending there over abuse alleged by prisoners held in the high-security unit. By July 2023, the Washington Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights and Urban Affairs had found evidence that 82 prisoners in the SMU at USP-Thomson had ...
by David M. Reutter
On September 7, 2023, the Louisville/Jefferson County Metro Government in Kentucky agreed to pay $20.5 million to settle a civil rights action alleging constitutional violations in the wrongful murder convictions and imprisonment of Jeffrey Dwayne Clark and Garr Keith Hardin.
Both now 54, they were 22-year-olds when found guilty in the 1992 stabbing death of Hardin’s girlfriend, Rhonda Sue Warford, 19. Prosecutors charged the killing was part of a satanic ritual, pointing to Hardin’s admitted involvement in satanism. But that admission was a lie made up by a dirty cop, who also tied the two to other evidence found at the crime scene. After 22 years of wrongful imprisonment, they were exonerated and freed in 2016 when DNA analysis of that evidence failed to find a match to them. But there was more to cast doubt on their 1995 murder conviction.
The lawsuit that they filed in 2017 alleged that disgraced Louisville police detective Mark Handy fabricated and manipulated evidence to wrongly convict them. The complaint noted that Handy had a reputation among colleagues as a “closer who could wrest a confession out of anybody.” He falsely reported that Hardin admitted to performing satanic rituals ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 16, 2023, the Georgia Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $5 million to the estate of Thomas Henry Giles, 31, a mentally ill prisoner who died after guards left him for hours locked inside a cell on fire at Augusta State Medical Prison (ASMP). It was reportedly the largest payout ever for a state prisoner’s death.
As a form of protest for being denied access to his counselor, Giles set fire to the mattress in his cell at about 2 p.m. on October 28, 2020. Guards Robert Roberson and Marcus Phillips watched as he used a shank to expose wires in a light fixture and sparked the blaze. But they took no action to stop him. Nor did they try to extinguish the fire. They also made no attempt to remove Giles. As smoke escaped the cell and filtered into the hallway, Sgt. Reggie Crite opened the food flap on Giles’ cell door. But no one did anything else to dissipate the heavy smoke filling the cell. Crite did, however, open a door to vent smoke from the cell block.
Giles begged guard Brittney Seals to render aid and remove him from ...
by David M. Reutter
When confronted with prisoner complaints, officials often produce glowing inspection reports and blame prisoners for destroying prison infrastructure. All too often, though, inept supervision is to blame for failure to maintain facilities. As many prisoners will tell you, when an inspection is looming, the prisonis transformed in preparation.
The U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ) Office of the Inspector General (OIG) has a new “on-sight inspection program.” The second unannounced inspection made under the policy occurred from May 22 to 26, 2023, at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Tallahassee, a low security prison built in 1938 that was converted in 1992 to house female prisoners for the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP). A satellite detention center for males was opened in 1996. Inspectors highlighted four areas of concern in their report on FCI-Tallahassee: food service, facilities condition, staffing shortages and prison safety and security.
A June 2022 survey of prisoners resulted in 55% rating food quality poor. Surveyed prisoners also said that outdated food was being served. The unannounced OIG inspection found “alarming conditions” in food service and storage. “[M]oldy bread had been served” at lunch and “discolored and rotting vegetables were being stored,” perhaps ...
by David M. Reutter
Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) leaders have come before the state legislature repeatedly to warn that it is a system operating in crisis. In a presentation on November 15, 2023, by global consulting firm KPMG, which was selected in 2022 by the state Department of Management Services to present a 20-year DOC master plan, the prison agency’s “current path” was described in one word: “Unsustainable.”
Lawmakers responded to the crisis in recent years by raising pay for DOC guards to $45,760 annually as of July 2023. Despite that and signing bonuses, too, DOC continued to experience a 26.3% turnover rate. Yet many of those same politicians have rejected overtures for criminal justice reform as part of the solution.
“We have asked for too long for DOC to do too much with too little,” said the chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee on Criminal and Civil Justice, Sen. Jennifer Bradley (R-Clay). “The salary increases have been helpful in changing the trajectory of our staffing challenges, but aging infrastructure, making sure that we have enough beds to meet increasing projections, remain big challenges.”
DOC currently cages about 85,000 prisoners, 14,000 of them serving life sentences, so its ...
by David M. Reutter
On November 27, 2023, the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Wisconsin denied state prison officials’ motion for new trial. That left standing a jury verdict finding that prisoner Adam Young was denied procedural due process in a disciplinary action, awarding him $700,000.
Young and several other Kenosha Correctional Center (KCC) prisoners were transported to work for a local employer on July 30, 2017. A guard dropped them off and left. But the employer was closed that day. The prisoners were left stranded in the parking lot in 80-degree weather. Realizing that no one was coming to pick them up for at least 11 hours, they started walking back to KCC. When they came across a phone, they called to be picked up.
Young was arrested the next day at the work site and issued a major disciplinary report for “escape” before transport to Racine Correctional Institution. At a disciplinary hearing, he was found guilty, sentenced to 60 days disciplinary separation and lost his work release privileges. After exhausting administrative remedies, Young filed a civil rights action alleging a procedural due process violation.
The case proceeded to a jury trial in July 2023. ...
by David M. Reutter
On June 14, 2023, the Colorado Department of Corrections (DOC) agreed to pay $500,000 to resolve a state prisoner’s allegation that his Eighth Amendment guarantee of freedom from cruel and unusual punishment was violated when he was restrained and isolated in a “dry cell” without running ...
by David M. Reutter
On October 19, 2023, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Eighth Circuit reversed denial of qualified immunity (QI) to officials at St. Louis’ “Workhouse” jail in a suit over a detainee’s fatal overdose, finding the lower court “tilted the scales too far in the plaintiff’s ...
by David M. Reutter
In September 2023, just two months into a program to rebate fines and fees for vacated drug convictions, Washington state courts had paid out more than $9.4 million. That’s nearly 20% of a $50 million fund created by state lawmakers after the state Supreme Court found ...
