Prisoner Released by Clinton Kills Again
An Inmate Dies, and No I Is Punished
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transcript
transcript
Death at Clinton Prison house
Inmates at Clinton Correctional Facility in Dannemora, N.Y., charge guards of horrible treatment. This video shows ane case. It includes some graphic scenes of violence.
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The story has been passed along for years at present as a kind of parable of brutality and injustice on the cellblocks: Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and ended up dead. In the inmates' telling, the guards got away with murder. When they watched this video, they testified that the inmate involved was 'resisting.' The guards at Clinton Correctional Facility in New York are infamous for inmate corruption. This is the testimony of guards involved in the decease of ane inmate, whose story is legendary at the prison.
DANNEMORA, N.Y. — Inmates who take served fourth dimension at the Clinton Correctional Facility here tell of being taken bated by a sergeant soon subsequently they get in and given a alert: Cantankerous the guards, and bad things can happen.
And they do. Inmates describe being ambushed by guards and beaten, taunted with racial slurs, and kept out of sight, in solitary confinement, until the injuries inflicted on them have healed enough to avoid arousing suspicion.
Ane story in particular has been passed along over the terminal few years as a kind of parable of brutality and injustice on the cellblocks. Leonard Strickland was a prisoner with schizophrenia who got into an argument with guards, and concluded upwards dead.
In the inmates' telling, the guards got away with murder, ganging upwardly on Mr. Strickland and beating him so viciously that he could barely move. The guards deny this, saying they acted only in self-defense and did what was necessary to subdue an out-of-control prisoner.
Simply what came next is indisputable. In a security video obtained past The New York Times, Mr. Strickland is seen in handcuffs, barely conscious and being dragged along the floor by officers, while a prison nurse standing close by does aught. Even every bit he lies confront down on the floor, virtually expiry, guards tin be heard shouting, "Cease resisting."
By the fourth dimension an ambulance arrived, medical records described Mr. Strickland's torso as cold to the touch and covered in cuts and bruises, with blood flowing from his ears.
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The 2010 case fits a troubling pattern of savage beatings past corrections officers at prisons across New York Country and a section that rarely holds anyone accountable, issues that have been highlighted in a series of manufactures over the past year by The Times and The Marshall Project, a nonprofit news arrangement.
Mr. Strickland's decease was only briefly noted in local newspapers, and probably would take been forgotten by all only the officers and inmates. But the escape of two murderers from Clinton in June attracted extraordinary attending to the maximum-security prison house, and details about its inner workings, long held underground, have started to reach outsiders.
Investigations by The Times uncovered the serious security lapses that made the escape possible, too as beatings by guards during the interrogations that followed. State officials have said they are investigating the abuse claims, just at that place is little to bespeak any results will come of it.
The internal affairs unit of the New York State Section of Corrections and Community Supervision has long been mired in dysfunction. Its former manager of operations is awaiting trial on charges of sexually harassing several subordinates.
Officials with the Land Police force and the local district attorney'southward office could not recall the terminal time charges had been brought against an officer at Clinton for excessive force, if ever, though inmates take filed scores of brutality lawsuits in recent years. The U.s. attorney for the Northern District of New York, which has jurisdiction over nearly half of the state's 54 prisons, has non brought a brutality case involving a country corrections officer in at least five years, according to a spokesman.
In the Strickland instance, the police force and the district attorney ended at that place had been no criminal wrongdoing, though 2 land prison watchdog agencies, the State Commission of Correction and the Committee on Quality Intendance and Advocacy for Persons With Disabilities, issued highly critical reports documenting numerous misleading and false statements by officers.
The dozen or so officers and medical personnel identified in the investigations either still piece of work at Clinton or other land prisons, or were promoted or retired with full benefits. In the years since the Strickland case, several of them have again been accused of brutality by inmates.
The Times was able to piece together the story behind Mr. Strickland'southward death by reviewing internal corrections department reports, log book entries and statements past the officers involved, along with the autopsy written report and records by paramedics and emergency room doctors. Separately, six inmate witnesses were tracked downward and interviewed at iv prisons around the state.
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The Times was also able to obtain a re-create of a paw-held security video recorded by an officer that documented the terminal 45 minutes of Mr. Strickland's life. Information technology was made public terminal month, later on the paper petitioned the court and argued for its release in the grade of a lawsuit filed by the Strickland family. Unremarkably these suits are dismissed or settled before they reach trial. But the family unit'due south decision to push ahead with the case compelled the officers involved to testify in court several weeks ago, and fabricated public evidence that would unremarkably be off limits.
Accountability is typically elusive in these kinds of cases. Officers rarely speak up about wrongdoing for fear of reprisals from their fellow guards and volition lie to protect them, current and former corrections officials said. They are also shielded by a union that even high-ranking members of the corrections section admit holds tremendous sway over what goes on inside the prisons.
A corrections section spokesman said officials could not annotate on the Strickland case considering of the pending litigation, and the acting commissioner, Anthony J. Annucci, declined a asking for an interview.
At a news conference in September, Gov. Andrew 1000. Cuomo dismissed the possibility that officer brutality in the land prison system was a serious problem, suggesting that force is sometimes necessary to keep order. "They have to make certain they become a certain amount of respect in the job, otherwise they become hurt," Mr. Cuomo said.
The Bottom of the Stairs
Among the state's 17 maximum security prisons, Clinton has a reputation for being especially violent. While racial tension is a fact of life in many prisons, inmates say information technology is especially bad at Clinton, located in this rural expanse non far from the Canadian border. The prison is the biggest local employer and pays a good wage by regional standards. All only a few of the 950 guards, including those involved in the altercation with Mr. Strickland, are white.
A majority of the inmates, like Mr. Strickland, are black and come from New York Urban center, 300 miles to the due south; they say they face a constant barrage of racial slurs.
Two years before Mr. Strickland's death, some other black inmate, Bradley Ceasar, died under like circumstances.
Epitome
Mr. Ceasar, 52, who was developmentally disabled, got into a confrontation with guards on Aug. xi, 2008, and inside hours was dead. Officers and a nurse ignored his repeated pleas for help and provided no medical care, investigators said. An autopsy later determined that his ribs had been so badly broken that his lungs could not inflate properly, and he suffocated.
The department determined that the officers' deportment were advisable, and in the terminate, the only person disciplined was a prison nurse, Beth Farnan, who was fined $500. She remains employed at Clinton.
Similar Mr. Ceasar, Mr. Strickland was not known as a tearing inmate. While many of the prisoners at Clinton are serving sentences for murder, rape and other brutal crimes, Mr. Strickland had been convicted of criminal possession of a weapon.
He had not committed a serious disciplinary infraction during his previous four and a half years in prison, co-ordinate to country records. At the trial, Sgt. Betsy Whelden-Berglund said that for six months in 2009 she had overseen the cellblock where he was housed and had had no bug with him.
Mr. Strickland, however, did have a history of behaving erratically. By summer 2010, he had stopped taking medication for his schizophrenia, co-ordinate to prison records. At diverse times, his female parent, Selena Strickland, said, he claimed that he had had a babe, that he was God, that he was a millionaire and that he was married to Beyoncé. That Baronial, when his mother concluding visited him, she said, "he was talking out of his head."
On the morning of Oct. 3, 2010, the 44-yr-onetime Mr. Strickland was upset that a baby-sit had confiscated a plastic hand mirror, co-ordinate to several accounts. Not long later returning to the cellblock from breakfast, he got into a disagreement with an officeholder.
From this betoken on, the stories told by guards and inmate witnesses diverge widely.
In the guards' version, described at trial, Mr. Strickland argued with an officer, Casey Stiff, after being ordered to assemble his possessions and get downstairs to be locked into a new cell.
Among inmates, Officer Strong was considered trouble. He had a history of violent confrontations. Over an eight-twelvemonth period he had been injured during fights with inmates and gone on disability go out three times, he testified at the November trial. He said that he had retired last summer, at 36, and was unemployed and collecting inability insurance.
Officer Potent asserted in his trial testimony that Mr. Strickland punched him in the shoulder during the dispute. To defend himself, Officeholder Potent said, he punched Mr. Strickland twice in the head and in one case in the chest. He said he grabbed the inmate in a carry hug, and they struggled and both fell down the physical stairs.
Officeholder Strong was able to cease himself halfway down, he said, but Mr. Strickland cruel to the bottom. Despite the fall, several officers said, Mr. Strickland was able to jump to his feet and start fighting with a second guard, Cory Freedom. Co-ordinate to the court testimony, Officeholder Liberty then punched Mr. Strickland several times, while Officer Stiff used his baton to striking him in the dorsum and legs repeatedly.
By then well-nigh two dozen officers, responding to a call for backup, had surrounded Mr. Strickland.
And still he connected to "struggle violently," Officeholder Liberty contended. Only when four guards grabbed a limb each and pinned him to the ground was he finally subdued, several testified.
A prison accident report filed shortly after the episode listed just small injuries to the officers, mostly bruises and pulled muscles. The two guards who had repeatedly punched Mr. Strickland also had swollen right hands. (Some other officer afterward testified at trial that she had suffered broken ribs, just this was not mentioned in medical documents.)
The officers said Mr. Strickland had no visible injuries. Nor, they said, did he ever complain almost being hurt.
In interviews, inmates said the guards were lying.
Three — Kevin Goode, Walter Maddox and Frank Povoski — said they witnessed Mr. Strickland being pushed, not falling, downwardly the stairs. And three — Mr. Goode, Mr. Povoski and some other inmate who asked not to be identified for fear of retribution — said they saw him lying, badly injured, at the lesser. 2 said that after being beaten by several guards, he was dragged away screaming.
Accounts past prisoners are often viewed skeptically. Just the six were all interviewed separately; five were serving time in four different prisons and the sixth had been released. Their versions differed in some details. I said the events unfolded after they came dorsum from breakfast; another said information technology was after recreation. One prisoner said Mr. Strickland was handcuffed before he was pushed down the stairs; some other said it was afterward.
But the basic story the men told was the aforementioned: Mr. Strickland was pushed down a flight of stairs, then beaten nearly to death by a large grouping of guards.
Mr. Maddox, whose cell was on the same tier as Mr. Strickland'due south, watched events unfold from about 25 anxiety away, he said. He recalled Mr. Strickland's making a sound as though he was terrified when he was shoved downward the stairs.
Mr. Goode was head porter on the cellblock, and he said he was buffing the floor at the foot of the stairway that morning. He said that before Mr. Strickland was pushed, an officer yelled a racial slur. As Mr. Strickland fell down, Mr. Goode said, his skull hit the concrete steps several times. At the lesser he pulled himself into a tight fetal position, equally about x officers took turns kick him in the caput and the ribs, Mr. Goode said.
They "crush this child to zero," he said.
Mr. Povoski, who watched from a flooring to a higher place, said Mr. Strickland lay and so even so he assumed he was dead.
'Is He Breathing?'
Afterward a physical meet with guards, inmates, as a matter of standard exercise, are taken to the prison emergency room to be examined.
When Mr. Strickland arrived, the officers said, he resisted them, disobeying their orders, refusing to stand up or walk, and repeatedly kicking them. They testified that they responded professionally, transporting Mr. Strickland from the prison house emergency room to the mental health ward, and providing appropriate first aid.
The officers' sworn statements bear footling resemblance to the images captured that morning on the 45-infinitesimal video.
Investigators from the commissions of both correction and quality care reviewed the video and wrote reports that were highly disquisitional of the guards' response, too as the medical care provided past the prison house nurse. "Strickland did non resist the officers, nor was he out of control," the quality care commission report said.
As the video begins, Mr. Strickland is seen wearing white boxer shorts and a brown T-shirt, torn beyond his left shoulder. A big, purplish bruise is visible. He is cuffed from behind and pressed against a cinder block wall by ii officers, Terry James and Kevin Trombley.
"Inmate Strickland, you lot're going to comply with a strip frisk, practice yous understand me?" said Sgt. Steven Sweeney, who was supervising.
Mr. Strickland looks unstable on his feet. His head is downwards. Over the adjacent few minutes, he appears to grow weaker, at one signal slumping over and trying to hold his head up with his right arm. It seems only the guards are keeping him from falling over.
Then he slumps to the floor.
The guards standing around him continue shouting throughout. "End resisting." "Don't push back." "He's still fighting."
The lawyer for the Strickland family unit, John Seebold, contended that at this point in the video the officers were interim as if he was resisting to justify their brutal handling of him before.
After five minutes, while Mr. Strickland seems barely witting, the officers decide to take him upstairs to the mental wellness ward and give him an injection to at-home him downward.
At that place is a gurney a few anxiety away, but Officers James and Trombley grab Mr. Strickland past his arms, which are nevertheless handcuffed, and elevator them until they are hyperextended behind his head. Then they elevate him out of the room. (In Sergeant Sweeney's subsequent report, he wrote, "I directed the officers to assist him to the elevator using professional techniques.")
They elevate him onto the lift, accept information technology to the third floor, and so drag him off, dropping him face down in a hallway, nonetheless handcuffed. ("I again directed staff to assist inmate off the elevator in which staff complied," Sergeant Sweeney wrote.)
While Mr. Strickland is left lying on the ground for more than ii minutes, motionless, several officers pace over him.
At 9 minutes 15 seconds into the video, someone is heard asking, "Is he breathing?"
For the next 35 minutes, as nurses and officers perform CPR, Mr. Strickland is unconscious and unmoving, yet remains handcuffed. (Asked at trial why the handcuffs were not removed, Sergeant Sweeney answered, "Medical'south involved, simply he's still a disciplinary problem for me.")
The video concludes at 10:15 a.one thousand., as Mr. Strickland is loaded into the back of an ambulance and the doors close behind him.
Nevertheless Handcuffed
Country investigators were scathing in their assessment of the medical response past the prison house nurse, Robert Fitzgerald. A report by the Country Commission of Correction said Mr. Fitzgerald "showed complete condone of the obvious signs of a nonresponsive inmate."
On the video, Mr. Fitzgerald is seen standing nearby and doing nothing every bit Mr. Strickland collapses onto the emergency room floor, and is dragged to the elevator.
Instead of riding in the lift along with the officers to provide intendance for Mr. Strickland, Mr. Fitzgerald took the stairs. Again he is seen on the video off to the side, watching for nearly three minutes while Mr. Strickland lies motionless in the hallway of the mental health clinic, almost death.
When asked during a deposition why he did non intervene sooner, Mr. Fitzgerald said he had to wait for Sergeant Sweeney to determine that the inmate was no longer a safety risk.
Simply when Sergeant Sweeney was asked during the trial why it had taken him then long to give Mr. Fitzgerald permission to treat the inmate, he said that the decision on when to intervene was Mr. Fitzgerald's.
"Medical should take did something," the sergeant testified.
Thirty-ane minutes into the video, Mr. Fitzgerald can be heard complimenting an officer administering CPR. "You're doing great," the nurse says.
In reality, those nowadays were doing a poor job, according to the medical experts who testified for the plaintiff and the defense at the trial. Because Mr. Strickland was handcuffed from behind the entire fourth dimension, his dorsum was not flat confronting the floor, compromising the effectiveness of the CPR, both doctors testified. And instead of continuously applying CPR, the staff took numerous breaks.
Not until the ambulance crew arrived, 30 minutes later on Mr. Fitzgerald first noted that Mr. Strickland had stopped animate, did he propose removing the handcuffs.
"Is there any way we tin get those cuffs off the dorsum of him?" Mr. Fitzgerald asked an ambulance worker.
"I don't recollect he's going to go anywhere," she answered.
The ambulance arrived at Champlain Valley Physicians Hospital at 10:40 a.yard., and at 10:45 Mr. Strickland was formally pronounced dead.
A Curious Diagnosis
The medical report by the ambulance crew detailed extensive injuries: bruises all over Mr. Strickland's body, including his forehead, head, left cheek and shoulders; a missing molar on the upper left side of his mouth; blood and clear fluid coming from his ears; encarmine abrasions on both knees; and markings suggesting that something may have been placed around his cervix.
The autopsy by the county coroner concluded that Mr. Strickland had died of cardiorespiratory arrest due to cardiac ischemia, meaning his heart could non get sufficient oxygen and ceased to office.
At the trial, the medical expert for the Strickland family unit, Dr. Alan Schechter, an emergency room physician at Montefiore Medical Center, testified that based on the autopsy results he believed Mr. Strickland died when his middle gave out from "stress induced by the altercation."
"If he did not have the stressful events, he would not have had a heart attack," said Dr. Schechter, who handles quality care reviews of emergency room deaths at Montefiore.
Had Mr. Strickland received the proper medical care, the doc testified, "more likely than not he would have survived."
Dr. Donald Doynow, an attending physician in emergency medicine at St. Peters Hospital in Albany, was the medical proficient for the country. He testified that the coroner's autopsy results were incorrect, and that the inmate had instead died from a condition known as Excited Delirium Syndrome.
It is a controversial diagnosis, viewed with skepticism by many in the medical profession. The syndrome is not listed in the current Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders, nor is it recognized by the American Medical Association or the American Psychological Association.
It is, however, recognized by the American College of Emergency Physicians.
Dr. Doynow said studies had institute that amongst the groups most vulnerable to Excited Delirium Syndrome were males who suffered from mental affliction and stopped taking their medication. Ane of the most prominent symptoms, he said, is the loss of the power to feel pain, which could explicate how a prisoner might be able to repeatedly resist the physical restraints practical by corrections officers.
Dr. Doynow said the syndrome could bring nearly cardiac arrest.
When pressed about the syndrome, Dr. Doynow, who has been practicing medicine since 1988, testified that he himself had never seen a instance of it.
Seeking Answers
At Clinton there is a commission of inmates designated to meet regularly with the prison management team as well as uniformed officers, to talk over issues of concern. Typically, the topics might include the handling of proceeds from bottle returns, or the distribution of stamps.
Not at the meeting held on Nov. 22, 2010. Mr. Strickland's death, and brutality at the prison, were at the top of the inmates' calendar.
Committee members complained that violence past the guards was out of mitt. They asked that the assistants provide them with a copy of the Strickland dissection written report and requested an investigation into the alleged beating of an inmate, Thomas Murphy, who they said had been desperately injured 20 minutes before Mr. Strickland, by guards "wearing steel toe boots."
Among the administrators present at the meeting were the prison's superintendent, Thomas LaValley, and two of his deputies, along with Sergeant Sweeney.
According to the minutes of the meeting, the prison administrators responded that "all allegations of abuse are investigated," and "when the autopsy is completed it will be public cognition."
Mr. Povoski, who was vice president of the inmates' committee at the fourth dimension, said the autopsy was never received and brutality at the prison house continued, unabated.
A Brutal Legacy
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In the years since, several officers involved in the Strickland case have been named in lawsuits filed past other inmates alleging brutality.
A suit filed last year by one inmate, Moshe Cinque Canty, claimed that a grouping of officers, including Sergeant Sweeney, handcuffed him, vanquish him and dragged him around by his dreadlocks. The officers shouted racial slurs, the suit claims. One baby-sit yelled for the officers to pull the dreadlocks from Mr. Canty's caput and "choke the nigger with them," the suit says.
According to Mr. Canty, who is serving time for attempted murder and robbery, when the chirapsia was over Sergeant Sweeney told the others to straighten up their apparel, saying, "We have to look professional."
In a legal filing, the officers denied all of Mr. Canty'southward accusations.
Another pending suit from concluding yr names Sergeant Sweeney along with Kevin Trombley, the officeholder who handcuffed Mr. Strickland and helped elevate him to the elevator.
Edwin Banks, who is serving time for drug possession, said in the accommodate that Officer Trombley had repeatedly harassed him near his dreadlocks. Ane morn, after breakfast, co-ordinate to Mr. Banks, Officer Trombley, Sergeant Sweeney and others severely beat him. Mr. Banks claimed that the sergeant then had the guards bear him past his limbs to the infirmary, with 1 officer grabbing his shirt collar then tightly that he passed out.
Lawyers for the officers have not all the same filed a response to the accusations.
In each of these cases, inmates said they had filed grievances with the prison house administration and written messages to Albany, including to the governor. Zilch came of them.
Within ii weeks of Mr. Strickland's death, several inmates said, they were questioned past the State Police and internal diplomacy investigators with the corrections section. Most said they did non know the names of the officers involved but would have been able to make identifications if they saw them again.
The Times has interviewed more than a dozen inmate witnesses in connectedness with several brutality cases in contempo months, and non one had been shown photos of suspect officers by state investigators, they said.
Partly considering the video evidence in the Strickland case was then compelling, investigators with the corrections department referred the case to the Land Bureau of Labor Relations for possible departmental disciplinary activity.
Cipher happened. The state agency that oversees licensing of medical professionals did not pursue the matter either.
Video
transcript
transcript
Watch: The Full Leonard Strickland Video
This 44-infinitesimal video begins as Leonard Strickland, an inmate with schizophrenia, is beingness assessed for medical treatment at Clinton Correctional Facility and afterward his initial altercation with the prison's guards.
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In a security video obtained by The New York Times, Mr. Strickland is seen in handcuffs, barely conscious and being dragged forth the floor past officers, while a prison nurse standing close past does nothing. Even as he lies in a hallway, face down and near expiry, guards tin be heard shouting, "Stop resisting." Clinton Correctional Facility
The Land Police ended "that no criminal behave of others contributed" to the death, and the Clinton County district chaser declined to present the example to a chiliad jury.
The officers and the nurse involved either continue to work for the corrections department or have retired with their full pensions. At the trial, Sergeant Sweeney said he left the department last May after 33 years of service, and is now working equally a rural postal service carrier.
The civil case is non likely to exist resolved any time shortly. Unless the parties settle first, the judge is expected to take upwards to a year to return his decision.
At a hearing this calendar month in Albany, Daniel O'Donnell, the chairman of the State Assembly prisons committee, called for the creation of an independent oversight agency to monitor the land prison organisation. The meeting was adjourned, until an unspecified appointment, because the corrections department declined to evidence.
During the civil trial, Mr. Strickland's female parent, a sometime nursing home aide who is lxx years old, testified that she used to try to make the six-hour bus trip from Brooklyn to visit her son once a calendar month, but since he died she had moved to Georgia.
She was asked how she learned of her son'south expiry. She said a prison house chaplain had called a government minister that he knew in Brooklyn, who came to her house. She said that the next day, she phoned a counselor at Clinton to ask if there was whatsoever information near how her son had died. The counselor, she said, told her "no, because information technology was under investigation."
In that location was no funeral, Mrs. Strickland told the court. "I had lack of funds."
According to the death certificate, her son was buried on October. 15, 2010, in the Clinton Correctional Cemetery, a mile exterior the prison wall.
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Source: https://www.nytimes.com/2015/12/14/nyregion/clinton-correctional-facility-inmate-brutality.html
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