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| Ohio inmates accuse officers of brutality |
| By Cleveland Plain Dealer |
| Published: 08/19/2003 |
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Some of the inmates who led the Lucasville riot in 1993 say officers pummeled them and doused them with chemical spray during a death-row uprising four years later. The inmates testified via video in U.S. District Court this week that officers violated their civil-rights by using excessive force to quell the riot at the Mansfield Correctional Institution. 'I felt like somebody stuck me in a meat grinder and tumbled me around,' said inmate Jason Robb in a videotaped deposition played before Judge Donald Nugent and a jury. Robb said he was knocked unconscious and suffered a fractured skull. He said officers went after him and others because inmates had killed officer Robert Vallandingham at Lucasville. State prison officials acknowledge that Robb was beaten seriously, but not by officers. Attorneys for the prison system said fellow inmates tortured him. Norman Hills, a prison administrator, said he saw Robb bleeding from the head before officers went into his cell. Prison officials said force was needed to control the state's most dangerous inmates, who the officials said were out to kill snitches and beat other inmates. About 5:15 p.m. on Sept. 5, 1997, inmates on death-row cell block 4 overpowered a officer and grabbed keys to the cell doors of 37 inmates. Many began destroying windows, sinks, kitchen areas and officer stations, causing hundreds of thousands of dollars in damage. Others began using makeshift weapons to pummel prisoners they hated. Some of the weapons included padlocks stuffed into tube socks, which prisoners swung at inmates' heads. Staughton Lynd, an attorney for the inmates, said officers then dispersed dozens of canisters of chemical spray, even though fewer than a handful would have done the job. Officers went door to door, pulling inmates out of cells. Robb testified that officers grabbed him and began beating him. He said he could not breathe because of the gas. As he staggered to his feet, officers walked him out of his cell and rammed his head twice into a steel post, he said. Robb also testified that he suffered psychiatric trauma from the beating. Hills testified that Robb was bloodied as he left his cell but that the inmate never discussed his beating, saying only that the gas had bothered his eyes. Carol O'Brien, an attorney for the prison system, said Robb had suffered psychiatric problems since 1990, when someone smashed his head with a pipe. |
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