Jurors watched video after video Wednesday morning of juvenile detention officers storming into cells and pepper-spraying detainees in the eyes, then leaving the prisoners to “cook” for several minutes before calling them out to wash the chemicals off in a shower.
The jury in U.S. District Judge Billy Roy Wilson’s court is hearing criminal civil-rights charges against Will Ray and Thomas Farris, two former jailers at the White River Regional Juvenile Detention Center in Batesville.
As Dennis Fuller, a former supervisor of the two men, narrated from the witness stand, jurors learned that Capt. Peggy Kendrick often opened a prisoner’s cell door before the spraying and incited an angry word or phrase that another guard, standing out of sight in the hallway, would use to justify rushing in and spraying the offender.
Fuller, who was a lieutenant working directly under Kendrick, said the routine was “scripted,” with him usually being the one with the spray, Ray acting as the “hands-on person” who held the inmate and turned his face toward the spray, and Farris guarding the door to keep it open and prevent an escape.
Despite carrying out the routine a number of times -- too many times to count -- Fuller said the first time FBI agents showed him one of the videos, “I was horrified.”
Asked why, he replied, “Because he did not deserve that, and I was a part of it.”
He was talking about a 14-year-old boy whose in-cell camera showed him being awakened at 7:40 a.m. Nov. 6, 2013, by a jailer who took his mat and blanket, which Fuller said was required for anyone who was “on lockdown” during “non-sleeping hours.”
For 25 minutes, the video showed the boy sleeping on his barren bunk, his arms wrapped around himself under his orange jumpsuit in an apparent effort to stay warm.
Suddenly, three jailers entered the cell -- Fuller, followed by Ray and then Farris.
Asked why the jailers entered the cell, Fuller replied, “To pepper-spray him.”
Samantha Trepel, an attorney for the Department of Justice, sought a more detailed explanation, but Fuller replied only, “Following orders. Just doing what we were told.”
He said the order came directly from Kendrick, “who told us to go in and deal with him,” which was understood to mean to administer pepper-spray. Fuller shrugged when asked what the boy had done, saying, “She was upset with him for some reason.”
The video showed Fuller kicking the bunk to awaken the prisoner, who lay facing a wall. Then Fuller shook his canister of pepper spray as Ray surged forward and wrapped his arms around the startled prisoner to turn him over and expose his face. The video shows Ray struggling to hold onto the squirming prisoner while Fuller sprayed him twice in the eyes.
Fuller testified Wednesday that he knew his actions violated the juvenile jail’s policy on using force, “because he wasn’t a threat,” to himself or anyone else, and he wasn’t destroying property.
But in the jail, he said, prisoners were regularly pepper-sprayed as a form of punishment.
Both Fuller and Kendrick have pleaded guilty to charges of violating inmates’ civil rights.
An incident report Fuller later wrote about that use of force also was shown to jurors on courtroom video monitors. In it, he wrote that “Ray placed his hands” on the prisoner “and began to physically persuade him off the bunk, at which time [the boy] began to bite him.”
Fuller admitted that he lied in the report, explaining, “We were told to make them look good,” in case they were ever reviewed by outsiders such as intake officers, probation officers and court officials. He said Kendrick reviewed the reports herself and often made jailers take out words such as “grabbed,” ordering them to replace it with “placed.” He said she also encouraged them to say the prisoner “came at me with an aggressive stance” or “began to fight.”
The former lieutenant said Kendrick later told him that she had wanted the boy punished because he was seen masturbating in his cell and trying to injure himself with part of a mop.
Trepel played a second video, recorded another day that month, in which Fuller can be seen blasting the same boy with a stream of pepper spray and then closing the cell door to let him “cook” while jailers gathered shampoo, soap and clean clothes for the prisoner to wear after being decontaminated. Fuller testified that the jail’s policy requires officers to decontaminate prisoners “immediately,” but Kendrick wanted them “to burn longer.”
The video picks up again, minutes later, as Fuller enters the cell to take the boy to the shower. Fuller said the boy was temporarily blinded by the chemical and was gesturing to his neck because “he was panicking.”
In the hallway outside the cell, a simultaneous video shows Ray giving Fuller a “thumbs up” as Fuller exits the cell.
A report Fuller wrote on the incident stated that the boy was sprayed because he “continued to ignore my instructions and continued to strike his cell door,” which Fuller said wasn’t true.
A second report on the incident, written by Ray, said the inmate was sprayed “to gain his compliance and prevent him from doing harm to himself.”
A third video involving the same boy, time-stamped Nov. 21, 2013, shows the jailers removing a second prisoner from the cell before going in to spray the boy. A simultaneous video from outside the cell shows Kendrick outside the open cell door, gesturing and talking to the boy until he says something that prompts him being sprayed. Fuller said the boy’s infraction was responding angrily to Kendrick’s taunts.
In his report about that incident, Fuller falsely stated that the prisoner “began to get loud, violent and aggressive,” and “clenched his fists and came toward Capt. Kendrick.”
Yet another video recorded Nov. 21, 2013, shows another boy leaning casually against the wall of his cell when Farris and Ray suddenly enter, and Ray blasts him with a burst of pepper spray. The inmate buries his head in his jumpsuit and covers his head with his hands as he waits three minutes for his cell door to be reopened so he can be decontaminated.
Fuller testified that Kendrick falsely reported that the boy had been “slapping another inmate,” hitting his cell walls and “took an aggressive stance.”
Fuller remained on the witness stand all day Wednesday, acknowledging under cross-examination that he is awaiting sentencing and is hoping for a lenient sentence in exchange for his testimony.
He also said jailers were given very basic training, which Kendrick often overrode. Those who didn’t follow her orders, he said, were assigned to night shifts and weekend duty, and weren’t promoted. He said Kendrick promoted him to lieutenant, but it was a title without authority.