ALABAMA
A federal grand jury this week indicted four officers at the Alabama Department of Corrections for kicking and beating an inmate with batons, according to federal prosecutors.
Sgt. Keith Finch and corrections officers Jordan Thomas and Kevin Blaylock are charged with deprivation of rights under the color of law. Thomas and Sergeant Orlanda Walker are charged with obstruction of justice, according to officials.
The indictment alleges that, on Sept. 12, 2018, Finch, Thomas, and Blaylock used excessive force to punish a prisoner who ran out of his cell in the Bibb Correctional Facility in Brent, Alabama.
After two officers took the prisoner to the ground, the prisoner curled up in a fetal position and was surrounded by multiple officers.
Finch, Thomas, and Blaylock then kicked the prisoner and hit him multiple times with their batons. As a result of this unjustified use of force, the prisoner sustained bodily injury.
Thomas and his supervisor, Walker, then obstructed justice by filing false reports that claimed “all force ceased” once the prisoner was on the ground.
The defendants are presumed innocent unless proven guilty.
According to NBC News, the federal grand jury indictments were returned less than a week after the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division released the results of an investigation that “found reasonable cause to believe that there is a pattern or practice of using excessive force against prisoners in Alabama’s prisons for men.”
In that 28-page report released Thursday, investigators alleged that corrections employees often failed to properly document or report uses of force, NBC reported.
DOJ NOTED:
These cases were investigated by the FBI, and are being prosecuted by Civil Rights Division Trial Attorney Michael J. Songer and Assistant U.S. Attorney Catherine Crosby Long of the Northern District of Alabama’s Birmingham Office.