Four inmates at a northwest Georgia prison filed a federal lawsuit Tuesday that claims guards punched, kicked, stomped and hit them with batons, inflicting injuries so serious that two were hospitalized and one of them had to have surgery.
The suit is reminiscent of another incident in 1997 at the same institution – Hays State Prison in northwest Georgia in Trion and near LaFayette. The state had to pay 14 inmates and their lawyers $285,000 to resolve a federal lawsuit filed after members of the prisons tactical squad conducted aggressive and bloody searches of inmate cells.
In the case filed Tuesday, the inmates say officers swarmed the D2 dormitory after some of the prisoners kicked doors and yelled in protest of something they witnessed from the dorm's window, guards allegedly roughing up other inmates.
At some point during the Aug. 12 incident an officer was injured. “Who hurt my officer?” Capt. Timothy Clark demanded, according to the suit. After that the beatings ensued, according to the lawsuit.
A Department of Corrections spokeswoman said DOC had not seen the suit and agency’s policy is to not comment on pending litigation. The prisoners want compensatory and punitive damages.
The suit names 10 officers and two supervisors.
The four inmates – now at different prisons -- say in the complaint they did nothing to prompt the beatings.
“We are concerned about this continued pattern of violence,” said Atteeyah Hollie, an attorney with the Southern Center for Human Rights which filed the complaint. “These attacks were unprovoked. They [the inmates] want to see an end to this pattern.”
According to the suit filed in U.S. District Court in Rome, the inmates who brought the suit were not involved in the incident that drew the prison’s Correctional Emergency Response Team to the D2 cell block. Inmates Miracle Nwakanma and Cornelius Spencer, convicted murders; Gregory Haines, convicted of kidnapping; and armed robber Eric Towns said they were beaten after they were handcuffed.
“CERT team members were picking people out and retaliating against them for something that happened in the dorm,” Hollie said.
The lawsuit said there was blood on the floor and inmates could be heard screaming. Three of them were allegedly beaten unconscious.
Doctors said Towns and Nwakanma had possible “neurological damage.”
Nwakanma was kicked in the face several times and his jaw was broken. He had oral surgery last September to remove pieces of shattered teeth embedded in his lip, the suit said.
Spencer, taken by ambulance to a local emergency room, suffered a “closed head injury,” the suit said.
Towns allegedly had to use crutches for a while after the incident
The suit said “boot prints were still visible on Haines’s back several days after the incident.”
The suit said none of the officers filed “use of force” reports but the prison medical staff submitted “use of force assessment” reports.
“Physical abuse against prisoners cannot be tolerated in a civilized society,” Hollie said.
"The Eighth Amendment [protection from cruel and unusual punishment] is not conditional upon their crimes," Hollie said. "They have a right to be protected and they were not."
In 1997, Hays State prison workers described blood on the walls and in air vents and scenes that made them physically ill after officers swept through, looking for contraband.
The reports of violence during such sweeps at several prisons were factors in then-Commissioner Wayne Garner’s dismissal. Garner watched the beatings and did nothing to stop them, according to that suit.
The most recent legal complaint said the two supervisors also watched and did nothing to stop the attacks on inmates. “But rather directed, incited and explicitly encouraged the unconstitutional assaults,” the suit said.
About the Author
