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Mecklenburg Jailhouse Blues
Inmate lawsuits allege unprovoked, severe beatings at Jail Central
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Attorney Jean Snyder, trial counsel with the MacArthur Justice Center at the University of Chicago Law School, also handles inmate abuse cases. Snyder says that in jails with a systematic brutality problem, the cases that get filed are usually the tip of the iceberg because inmates rarely have access to the funds or legal assistance it would take to carry a case forward.
"An inmate has to get a lawyer to be interested in his case," said Snyder. "There isn't necessarily a lot of money to be made, which discourages the suits. They also require enough objective facts that the beating took place and was serious enough for somebody to find the claim credible. Many of these beatings go on in situations where an inmate's claim is not going to be considered credible even if the beating really did go on. They may be alone with the guard, and other guards likely will obey the code of silence and not provide any evidence that the guard did something wrong. Even if somehow there are credible reasons to believe the inmate, then they still have to get to a lawyer."
Despite the fact that Snyder has won suits on behalf of inmates in the past, she describes a sense of futility in trying to protect inmates in abuse-prone jails.
"There's very little sympathy for inmates even when they're in a jail where these aren't people convicted of crimes, these are people awaiting trial," she said. "In a sense, the inmates are sitting ducks for guard abuse because there can be a feeling that "we can beat these guys up, nobody's really going to care.' The issue is if it's a few bad apples who are doing this at a jail, is the sheriff's office really doing what it should to get rid of them?"
Sheriff's spokesperson Julia Rush told us unequivocally, "We don't beat or assault people. We do try to run a professional organization."
The following are the stories told by the inmates who've filed lawsuits against the sheriff, his deputies and, occasionally, against Mecklenburg County and other agencies. We must warn you that some of these beatings were so severe, it may be disturbing to read the accounts.
Dwight Cole was arrested for allegedly assaulting his girlfriend on August 19, 2001. Though the charges were later voluntarily dismissed by the District Attorney's office, he spent three days at Jail Central. According to his suit, his ordeal started in a holding cell in the basement of the jail sometime after 4:30am. The cell contained no toilet, and Cole claims he repeatedly asked security officers if he could use the bathroom because he needed to urinate. After his requests were ignored over the course of several hours by officers who he says laughed at him, Cole became desperate and urinated into the drainage hole in his cell. In response, Cole says, Deputy Sheriffs M.A. Carlson, John S. Malone, John W. Grimes and two other officers burst into his cell and threw him against the wall, after which he was beaten by Carlson and Malone while the other officers held him down. After the beating, he was strapped into a restraining chair and rolled into another holding cell. Cole hadn't had any liquids since 10:30pm the previous day and around 7:30am he began to ask for water. As hours passed and officers ignored his pleas for water -- at one point he says Carlson walked by with a Styrofoam cup marked H2O to taunt him -- he again became desperate. At one point, Cole banged his head against the door, begging for water. After a while, he figured that if he removed his belt and put it around his neck to look as if he was choking himself, someone would have to get him a drink of water. After that, he was taken to Mecklenburg County Mental Health where, he says, Deputy Sheriff Carl Mauldin, who was escorting him, pulled him back from a water fountain as he tried to approach it.
Once in the custody of Mental Health, Cole finally got a drink and explained to the doctor that he wasn't suicidal, but merely needed water. After he was returned to the jail, he was beaten twice more. In one of those incidents, he claims, he was held down by officers who were members of the Direct Action Response team (DART) while DART officer Gregory Griffith put on a black glove and beat him with a closed fist, busting his lips open.
While in jail, Cole claims he wasn't allowed to use a phone and that when he asked a representative from Mental Health who visited him in the afternoon of Aug. 20 why he had not yet been before a judge about bond, she explained that it was because he was on suicide watch. He begged her to help him, and he says she promised she'd see what she could do. Ten hours later, he was finally released.
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