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| Ex-guard awaits sentencing for inmate death |
| By ocala.com |
| Published: 08/10/2009 |
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They both spent their lives moving among state and federal prisons, though on opposite sides of the bars. For him, the seasoned prisoner, that involved time in Minnesota and Texas. For her, the seasoned corrections officer, that included stints in Washington state and South Carolina. It was at the sprawling federal prison complex in Coleman that their paths eventually crossed. For both individuals, the coincidence led to a final destination of sorts: in a career and in a life. Richard Delano was brutally beaten by his cellmate on March 4, 2005, and died 13 days later. Last month a federal jury found that corrections officer Erin Sharma contributed to the death by helping put Delano and his attacker, a man nicknamed "Animal," in the same cell at Coleman's maximum-security unit. Sharma is in jail awaiting sentencing. She faces anything from probation to life in prison. Delano's family is waiting, as well - for justice. "I'd like to ask this woman how she feels about being on the other side of the bars," said Delano's twin brother, Michael. "How is she going to feel if she meets up with a woman that's like Animal?" Sharma's mother feels her daughter did "nothing wrong." "Erin's a good person," said Sharon Donald. The jury thought Sharma, 33, intentionally had Delano transferred into John "Animal" McCullah's cell. Delano had injured her during an earlier spat, and prosecutors say Sharma commissioned McCullah to "break his leg" in revenge. Sharma's family members say that's preposterous. In interviews since the weeklong trial, they describe a compassionate, devoted mother and ethical officer. "She's not the type to harbor ill will against anyone," said her uncle Paul Pitts, who called the verdict "devastating" to family. "You never know with those prisoners. Erin had nothing to do with authorizing them in the cell together," her mother said. If not Sharma, then who, Delano's family asks. "How could this actually happen?" asked Michael Delano, who plans to attend Sharma's sentencing Oct. 26 at the Orlando federal courthouse. He is still contemplating civil action against the federal Bureau of Prisons. From a young age, Erin Sharma was surrounded by discipline: her maternal grandmother was a former state corrections officer and her father was stationed in the U.S. Army, moving his family around from Georgia to Missouri, Texas, Pennsylvania, even Germany. From that upbringing emerged a self-disciplined young woman. In her teenage years, Sharma enrolled in private tutoring and summer classes and finished high school one year ahead of her peers. At one point interested in the Air Force, she instead chose a career in correctional law enforcement, starting off at a Washington state prison when she was just 21. Two years later she married Rajesh Sharma, a fellow corrections officer and former classmate of her older brother. Her family calls him Roger. The Sharmas moved to South Carolina in 2000. They both started work at the federal prison in Edgefield, west of Columbia and near the Georgia border. They had a daughter, now 8 years old. Shortly after her birth, they wanted to be closer to Erin Sharma's mother in Panama City. They moved to Marion Oaks and started working at Coleman. Unlike Sharma, Richard "Rick" Delano didn't have a mobile childhood. He grew up in a small town 30 miles west of Rochester, Minn., where he struggled to gain a foothold on life. Raised in a family of seven, he and his twin brother were the youngest of the brood. Their father worked for the local power company; their mother was a housewife. Dodge Center, Minn., back in the 1970s and 80s, was so small that everyone knew each other. From an early age, Delano was headed down a slippery slope. By 10th grade, his brother said, he had dropped out of school, was running with a bad crowd and developed a drug habit - marijuana, eventually replaced by crack cocaine. He floated in and out of the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Stillwater on charges of theft and burglary before being convicted of more serious federal drug charges. "It was due to living the fast life," his brother said. By their early twenties, Michael, or "Mick," was Richard's only real contact in the family. They would touch base every couple of weeks or so, but there would sometimes be two-month stretches where they would go without speaking. "Pretty much the whole family didn't want to deal with it anymore except for myself," he said. And so it was to his fraternal twin that Rick would vent, inquire after his nieces and nephews, and express his desire to get out and live among the rest of society. Still, from that early age, Mick could sense the changes within his brother. "It's funny to listen to an inmate as they get older," he said. "You can hear them go from scared to confident in their voice and everything goes along right with it. Pretty much they have to man up." The advice he dispensed on the other line showed tough brotherly love. "Sometimes he would call and say, how disrespectful they (the officers) are and how they (the inmates) don't have any rights. My reply to him would be, 'Are you earning it? You're in prison for a reason.' " "I was probably hard on him at times because I wanted him to realize it wasn't a hotel," said Delano, a father of two 20-somethings who now runs his own construction crew in Dodge Center. Richard Delano was 39 when he died, and prison had consumed the last 18 years of his life. He was moved to Coleman from the Beaumont Federal Correctional Complex in Texas shortly after Sharma arrived due to his status as a protective custody inmate. His reputation as a prison snitch meant he would report rule-bending prison guards. Described by family as dry, sarcastic and an animal lover, Sharma once dreamed of becoming a veterinarian. She owns three dogs and four cats, all adopted. By the time the Sharmas moved to Ocala in 2001, she was also considering a paralegal career. Sharma didn't mind working the Special Housing Unit - known as the "SHU" - at Coleman, but had her gripes about upper management. She chalked up clashes as political, not personal, matters, according to family. But it was enough of an annoyance that they, and particularly her mother, took notice. Donald remembers her daughter's visit to Panama City in March 2005, shortly after the scuffle with Delano. "When she came down when her arm was hurt, I was like, 'What on God's earth made him (Delano) do that to you?' " Donald recalled. " 'Mom, I don't know, he was one of my better prisoners,' " her daughter told her. Prosecutors say the visit was calculated to provide an alibi when "Animal" carried out his mission. On the basis of personality alone, Richard Delano and Sharma seemed at odds from the start. Delano was placed in Coleman's SHU - known as "a prison within a prison" - for administrative, not disciplinary, purposes, meaning he needed to be separately housed for his own protection from other inmates. He was hired as an orderly in the SHU, shuttling from cell to cell, delivering mail, picking up after inmates or peddling their illegal - though tacitly allowed - indulgences like cigarettes and homemade alcohol. It was a job he liked so much that when he was fired, it was suggested at trial, he was lured into McCullah's cell on the promise of getting it back. Mick Delano said Rick was the type who "wouldn't say no." This flaw is what landed him in trouble from an early age. "He had to prove he had to be tough, and he would, even if it was a little illegal or major illegal, he would go do things for people," he said. As a G-7 officer, Sharma was on senior status, just two grades away from reaching lieutenant rank. At trial, federal prosecutors asserted that Sharma conspired with a superior officer, Michael Kennedy, to propose to the SHU lieutenant that Delano be moved into McCullah's cell for space issues. Even if she did not technically authorize the transfer, she did nothing to stop a move that was forseeably dangerous, even potentially fatal, prosecutors said. The law calls this "deliberate indifference." Kennedy, they said, had advised her Delano would get "a good ass-kicking and head-knocking" if moved. Read More. |
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