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| Jury sides with officers in N.J. prison incident |
| By Courier-Post |
| Published: 05/31/2004 |
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A jury in U.S. District Court found last Monday that state prison officers acted within appropriate standards almost seven years ago when they removed an inmate from his cell, doused him repeatedly with pepper spray and either dropped or threw him down a staircase inside Bayside State Prison. The defendants in the trial included the prison superintendent, Scott Faunce, and several officers. The inmate, Frederick Walker, had been "extracted" from his cell and moved to a restraint chair in solitary confinement by members of the prison system's Special Operations Group, an elite group of officers. The action on August 13, 1997, was in the aftermath of the murder of a Bayside officer by an inmate in July 1997. According to testimony at a five-day trial before Judge Robert Kugler, the officers focused on Walker, a former Newark police officer serving 16 years for robbery, because he complained loudly after his cell was ransacked during lockdown procedures. Almost all of his movement, from the cell to solitary confinement, was recorded by an internal affairs officer at the prison. Walker had no connection to the stabbing death of officer Fred Baker. Eight jurors voted unanimously that attorneys for Walker did not prove by a preponderance of evidence that the inmate was subjected to cruel and unusual punishment. Matt Schuman, spokesman for the Department of Corrections, said the verdict showed that, "despite a plethora of allegations to the contrary, the only serious injury that occurred during the entire episode was the blow (from the knife) that killed Fred Baker." He said that since the 1997 unrest at the prison, policies have changed and now require Special Operations Group officers to wear identification badges. |
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