A West Virginia prison inmate is accusing correctional officers of setting him up to be ambushed in a racist attack that left him stabbed, punched, and gouged in the eye while an officer yelled “stupid” and used the N-word. Lawyers for Lermon Russell, 44, said in a lawsuit filed last Thursday that although the offender was identified as Jacob Samples, a 33-year-old member of the Aryan Brotherhood, the attack was part of a series of abuses correctional officers instigated at the Mount Olive Correctional Center. Russell said in the lawsuit, reported by the Charleston Gazette-Mail and later obtained by Daily Kos, that he was targeted in the violent attack while he was the only black person in his pod.
The incident happened soon after a heated argument between Russell and another inmate escalated to threats from the prison leader of the Aryan Brotherhood, according to the suit. Sometime after that, prison workers allegedly asked Russell if he wanted a shower, and he said he did. “Before being released from his cell to shower, the Plaintiff was stripped-searched, handcuffed behind his back, and leg irons were placed around his ankles,” Russell’s attorney Sean Cook said in the suit. Russell noticed the Aryan Brotherhood leader watching from his cell as Russell headed toward the shower. When he got near the shower area, the chained man looked inside and noticed another person, according to the suit.
"Holy s---, someone is hiding in the shower," Russell said, according to the suit. That's when "an unrestrained" Samples "burst out of the shower area and attacked" Russell, yelling the N-word. At one point in the incident, a correctional officer also used slurs and said, “Kill that monkey,” Russell told his attorney. The imprisoned man also alleged in the suit that correctional officers on the scene failed to intervene, even though one of them was armed with a gas can intend for such altercations.
Russell told his attorney the attack didn’t stop until Samples got “tired and removed himself voluntarily.” That's when one of the correctional officers sprayed gas at Samples and Russell. "These correctional officers had no legitimate reason to spray the Plaintiff, as he laid on the floor seriously injured from the attack and helpless while still in handcuffs and leg irons," Cook said. "When Inmate Samples was finally restrained, (the) Plaintiff lost consciousness." Despite "desperate" pleas for a doctor, Russell said he got no "substantive medical care" and was instead told to "shut the hell up" by another correctional officer. Russell said he reported grievances repeatedly, which were ignored. "This conversation is over and this incident never happened,” said another person identified only as Toney.
Russell, who was convicted of malicious assault in 2017, has a parole hearing on Feb. 1 and a projected release date of Aug. 30, according to state prison records. Samples, in prison after multiple burglaries and a bank robbery, doesn’t have a parole hearing until April 30, 2023, and has a projected release date of Sept. 11, 2053. Still, about a year after the encounter with Russell, Samples reportedly provided his peer information about the correctional officers’ alleged involvement.
Named in the suit along with Toney and the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation are Commissioner Lolita Butcher; Commissioner Betsy Jividen; wardens David Ballard and Donald Ames; and correctional officers identified only by the names Hayhurst, Schrader, Smith, Bell, and Benton. The suit also includes two unidentified nurses and one unidentified correctional officer. In a suit covering issues more far-reaching than a single attack, Russell is alleging a systemwide failure within the state prison system. He told his attorney that officers instigated conflicts repeatedly, knocked his breakfast to the floor, and called him the N-word in one incident, and spread false rumors that he was a "rat" and a "child molester" in another.
“The Plaintiff remains incarcerated at MOCC, and still experiences prevalent and unrestrained racial harassment from fellow inmates and correctional guards on a daily basis,” Cook said in the legal document. Cook cited as further proof of a systemwide failure a photo showing some 30 cadets giving a Nazi salute during training with the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation. The cadets allegedly made the gesture as “a sign of respect” to their instructor Karrie Byrd, according to the lawsuit, which cited the executive summary of the state investigation into the photo.
“Byrd encouraged, reveled and sometimes reciprocated the salute, and overruled those who objected to and sought to discontinue the practice,” Cook stated in the lawsuit. “When asked by another employee what the cadets were doing in the picture, Byrd responded that it was because she was ‘a harda-- like Hitler.’” Russell said that although the trainer claimed she didn’t know the racial implications, “Byrd had to retake the picture multiple times because 10 cadets initially refused to perform the salute until Byrd ordered them to do so.”
West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation spokesman Lawrence Messina told Daily Kos in an email Tuesday, “...we intend to comment through any court filings in this case.”