Correctional officers at a Western Maryland prison kept medical personnel from attending to inmate Ifeanyi A. Iko as he lay motionless and apparently unconscious after a violent encounter with prison staff last year, according to legal papers filed in federal court by a lawyer for his family.
"Indeed, it was stated that as long as [Iko] was breathing, no one was going into the cell," attorney Gary C. Adler wrote in an amended complaint that was filed this week.
The complaint, filed as part of a civil suit seeking $28 million in damages, presents several new allegations regarding the events surrounding Iko's asphyxiation death at the Western Correctional Institution near Cumberland on April 30.
The Iko family's lawyer obtained the new information through discovery. During discovery, each side of a legal dispute is entitled to see the other side's documents and to learn what all the witnesses have to say.
Among the new details in the filing is an account of Iko's treatment during the 90 minutes Iko spent in a cell in the isolated "special observation housing unit" at WCI.
Iko, 51, was taken to the unit for psychological evaluation after officers forcibly removed him from a cell in the prison's segregation section, where problem inmates are confined.
The Nigerian immigrant refused to leave the cell voluntarily, and officers used three cans of pepper spray in their attempts to subdue him and get him into restraints.
The lawsuit alleges that officers put a "hood-like mask" over Iko's head improperly after spraying him, "with the cloth part of the mask wrapped around [Iko's] mouth and nose, further restricting his ability to breathe."
According to the lawsuit, Iko was brought to the special housing unit in a wheelchair, restrained with handcuffs and leg irons, and with the mask over his face to prevent spitting.
Iko was placed on his stomach on the cell floor, and several officers kneeled on him to pin him down as an officer spent five minutes trying to find plastic "flex cuffs" to replace the metal handcuffs, the suit says.
"After the flex cuffs were put in place, [Iko] was left laying on the floor on his stomach, handcuffed behind the back and with the mask still around his face," the complaint states.
"He did not move from that position on the floor from the time he was placed in the special observation housing unit cell (approximately 3 p.m.) until his body was discovered cold and without a pulse by correctional officers at approximately 4:30 p.m."
The suit adds that officers "prevented medical personnel who wanted to check on [Iko] from attending to him" during this time.
Iko had a reputation at the prison as a strong and dangerous inmate, correctional sources have said.
The lawsuit also alleges that Iko was dead -- although handled as if he were alive -- when taken by ambulance from the prison. A few minutes after driving away from the prison, a paramedic reported that Iko showed signs of rigor mortis, and he received permission to cease lifesaving efforts.
If Iko had been declared dead inside the prison, WCI officials would have been required under correctional department rules to take special steps to secure the scene and preserve evidence.
The state medical examiner's office ruled Iko's death a homicide in May, but an internal investigation and later a two-day grand jury probe found no criminal conduct by prison staff.
The autopsy report said Iko's death was caused by "chemical irritation of the airways by pepper spray," the placement of a mesh mask over Iko's face and the way he was restrained.
After Iko's death last year, state prison administrators adopted more restrictive rules on the use of pepper spray on prisoners.
They also held training sessions for correctional officers at WCI on the risks of "positional asphyxia" -- which can occur if an inmate is left lying on his stomach and handcuffed behind his back, making it difficult to breathe.
The lawsuit filed by the Iko family names Warden Jon P. Galley, Lt. James Shreve and 10 officers as defendants. It alleges violations of U.S. civil rights law and accuses the warden and correctional officers of trying to cover up the circumstances of Iko's death.
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An autopsy report on a prisoner who died at Western Correctional Institution appears to confirm accounts of inmate witnesses that he was sprayed with a heavy dose of pepper spray, had a "spit-protection mask" placed over his face and was carted away from his cell unconscious and in a wheelchair.
Ifeanyi A. Iko's relatives provided The Sun with a copy of the autopsy last week - the first official report by authorities to detail events surrounding the Nigerian immigrant's death April 30.
But at the same time the autopsy was released, Mark Vernarelli, a spokesman for the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services, said Friday that recent investigations of the death have found that correctional officers acted properly.
"No correctional staff members have been disciplined or transferred, because neither the [internal] investigation nor the grand jury investigation found any criminal wrongdoing or violation of policy," Vernarelli said.
The report by the state medical examiner's office said that a combination of factors resulted in Iko's death at the Western Maryland prison in Allegany County.
The autopsy report says that Iko, 51, died of asphyxia "caused by chemical irritation of the airways by pepper spray, facial mask placement" and the manner in which he was restrained.
Iko was forcibly removed from a cell in WCI's segregation unit, where problem inmates are confined, after he refused to leave voluntarily so that he could be taken to another part of the prison for psychological evaluation.
The state medical examiner's office ruled Iko's death a homicide in May but released no further details of its findings at that time.
No wrongdoing found
An internal investigation by the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services found no wrongdoing by prison staff.
An Allegany County grand jury spent two days last month examining the facts surrounding Iko's death. It concluded there was no criminal wrongdoing but recommended changing certain procedures.
The grand jury suggested that the Division of Correction "develop methods of additional training of ... employees on the risk associated with various forms of restraint up to and including positional asphyxia," which can occur if a restrained inmate is left lying on his stomach and handcuffed behind his back, making it difficult to breathe.
It also called for adopting protocols to better determine the physical condition of inmates while and after they are forcibly removed from a cell.
Vernarelli said the agency is closely studying the grand jury's suggestions. He said that the division had already identified some problem areas before Iko's death and was working to correct them.
WCI staffers have recently been going through training to prevent positional asphyxia.
Parallel accounts
The account of Iko's death given in the autopsy report, which was drawn in part from documents provided by public safety officers, parallels reports The Sun received from WCI inmates.
The inmate witnesses had said that three cans of pepper spray were used to subdue Iko, far more than prison guidelines called for, and that there was a mask covering his head as he was moved by wheelchair from his cellblock.
The autopsy report does not specify a quantity of pepper spray used but cites the disabling chemical spray as a factor in his death and confirms the use of a mask and a wheelchair.
"A spit-protection mask was placed on his head," the report says. "He was then taken to another facility by a wheelchair while an officer held his legs up by holding to the ankle cuffs."
The report also discusses the way Iko was wrestled into restraints, causing what it referred to as "chest compression" - a factor that contributed to his death.
In an interview, state Chief Medical Examiner David R. Fowler said that happens when "a body has been compressed by a weight, which prevents a person from being able to breathe." One way that can happen is when someone presses his weight down on an individual who is lying on his stomach, Fowler said.
'Blunt force injuries'
The written report says further that there were "blunt force injuries to [Iko's] face, back of the neck, left anterior shoulder and upper and lower extremities" and that he was left in the mask - lying face-down and handcuffed behind his back - once he was put in a cell in the special observation housing unit.
"When he was left in the cell, the officers considered he was alive by observing his chest movements," the autopsy report says. "He was found unresponsive at 4:30 p.m."
The autopsy report gives no indication whether Iko received medical treatment from the time he was forcibly removed from his cell in the segregation unit around 2:30 p.m. until he was discovered unresponsive two hours later.
Vernarelli, the corrections department spokesman, said prison staff followed required procedures.
"Mr. Iko was taken immediately after the cell extraction to the medical area, where he was offered care by contract medical staff," he said. "Our policy calls for inmates to be taken for evaluation by medical personnel following such incidents, and the correctional staff followed this policy."
However, Vernarelli said he did not know what medical treatment, if any, Iko was given after he was brought to the medical area.
"The care he was given, as with every other element of his final day, is part of the investigation," Vernarelli said.
Hearings planned
A legislative panel that oversees the corrections department is planning hearings to look further into lingering questions surrounding Iko's death.
Douglas L. Colbert, a University of Maryland Law School professor, questioned the thoroughness of the two-day grand jury investigation in Allegany County.
The grand jurors reviewed videotapes and written reports and heard testimony from prison staff. But they did not hear directly from inmate witnesses. Instead, jurors heard tape-recorded interviews of inmates that were done by internal investigators.
Colbert said that wasn't sufficient.
"It's hard to believe an inmate witness would have felt free to say everything he heard or observed because there was no guarantee of protection," Colbert said.
He called for a more open and independent investigation of Iko's death.
"There's no way of knowing if the officers' actions were justified or not because the public is being kept in the dark," Colbert said. "It's all being done in secret, and secrecy does not inspire public confidence."
Iko had been in state prison since 1991, when he began serving a three-year sentence for a drug-distribution charge. The next year, he received an additional 20-year sentence for stabbing and biting a correctional officer in an Eastern Shore prison.
Vernarelli said that Iko had a violent history in the prison system and that correctional officers acted with restraint.
"The institution is run with integrity and professionalism, and it is totally inappropriate to suggest that the staff is operating with anything less than total integrity," he said.
Allegations of Prisoner Abuse Predated Inmate's Murder
Federal authorities, who launched an investigation last month into the death of an inmate at Western Correctional Institution, were already looking into broader allegations of prisoner abuse at the rural Maryland prison, according to records relating to alleged incidents.
The broader inquiry by the U.S. Justice Department focuses on charges that a small group of correctional officers arranged inmate-on-inmate assaults and other types of retaliation against prisoners who wrote complaints or filed lawsuits about their treatment.
Records show that the officers involved were assigned to the Cresaptown prison's segregation unit, the same section of the facility that had housed Ifeanyi A. Iko, whose death April 30 was ruled a homicide by the state medical examiner's office and is being investigated by the FBI.
"The Justice Department does have an investigation under way concerning the Western Correctional Institution," said Eric Holland, a spokesman for the federal agency's civil rights division. "Because it's an ongoing investigation, I cannot comment further."
The department's inquiry into complaints lodged by WCI inmates casts yet another spotlight on conditions at the modern, medium-security facility near Cumberland in Allegany County.
In dozens of letters to The Sun since May, inmates there described rising tensions between them and officers in the segregation unit in the weeks and months before Iko's death. Two days before he died after a violent clash with officers, more than two dozen inmates embarked on a daylong protest in the unit over complaints of lousy food and unfair or abusive treatment from officers.
While federal authorities wouldn't discuss the inmates' complaints, civil lawsuits filed in federal court by three inmates before Iko's death allege a pattern of abuse dating back to 2001 - allegations that the officers and state prison administrators strongly deny.
Among claims spelled out in hundreds of pages of court documents:
An officer allegedly encouraged an inmate to beat up another inmate and stood by for several minutes during the assault in which the handcuffed inmate's head was slammed against the wall of his cell.
A black inmate who was put in a cell with a white supremacist claimed the other inmate beat him over a period of several days, and prison officials ignored his complaints.
The black inmate, 53, complained in a letter to WCI Warden Jon P. Galley: "I am no longer 25 years old and my fighting ability is non-existing. My left leg does not work and my back is hurting from being attack" by younger inmates.
Officers allegedly ganged up on inmates to assault or threaten them for making complaints against officers or for signing statements backing the accounts of other inmates involved in disputes with officers.
To entice inmates to assault certain prisoners whom they disliked, officers allegedly promised them more favorable treatment - such as protection from prison gangs or restoring access to telephones and other privileges. They threatened others, who refused to cooperate, with being exposed as "snitches" or being sent back to prisons where they had enemies they feared would harm them.
Maryland Assistant Attorney General David Kennedy, who represents officers named in the suits, said the claims are untrue. He said that inmates are notorious for concocting stories to cause trouble for prison staff. He noted that the inmates who are alleging wrongdoing by officers were serving time for serious crimes, such as armed robbery, drug dealing and similar felonies.
The fact that three lawsuits by different inmates make similar allegations does not make it more likely that their claims are true, he said. "It could mean a group of inmates doesn't like some particular group of officers, and the only way they see to get back is to make these complaints against these officers," he said.
The three inmates who filed the suits were held in the protective custody wing of WCI's segregation housing unit, which is the part of the prison where inmates are kept separate from the general population in an environment tightly controlled by officers.
Most inmates held in protective custody are usually either "snitches" - inmates who made enemies by informing prison authorities of the activities of other inmates - or former law enforcement officers who needed to be kept apart from the general population for their own protection.
Correctional experts say that inmates who need to be segregated are usually among the most troublesome or dangerous inmates in an institution.
In the case of Iko, the 51-year-old Nigerian immigrant who went to prison on a drug distribution charge and got an increased sentence after attacking a correctional officer at an Eastern Shore prison in 1992.
An internal investigation into his death by the Maryland Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services found no wrongdoing by WCI officers, and a two-day inquiry by an Allegany County grand jury reached the same conclusion.
Department Secretary Mary Ann Saar told the state Judicial Proceedings committee last month that the FBI notified her office Sept. 3 that the agency was conducting a preliminary investigation of his death. At the hearing, Saar refused to release videotapes or other records related to Iko's death pending the completion of the FBI inquiry.
It was unclear whether that inquiry is separate from the investigation the Justice Department's civil rights division has initiated into the allegations of inmate abuse.
Racial tensions
At last month's legislative hearing in Annapolis , several legislators voiced concerns about practices at the prison. They also raised questions about reports of racial tensions there. Prison officials say about three-quarters of WCI inmates are African-American and more than 90 percent of prison staff is white.
The inmates' claims of assault or abuse at WCI that allegedly took place between 2001 and 2003 appear to have piqued the interest of the courts, as well as the Justice Department.
Attorneys for the state, for example, have tried but failed to persuade a federal judge to dismiss a suit that was filed in 2001 by Melvin Caldwell, the WCI inmate who was attacked in a cell while handcuffed. The attorneys argued Caldwell's legal claims had no merit. The state does not dispute that the inmate's assault on Caldwell took place in the presence of a correctional officer and after the assailant's handcuff's were removed, while Caldwell remained cuffed.
Instead, the state argued that the two officers involved didn't know that the inmate posed a danger to Caldwell because his name wasn't on Caldwell's "enemy list," according to court filings.
But U.S. District Judge Alexander Williams Jr. noted in a memorandum dated Feb. 11, 2002, that Caldwell had repeatedly warned WCI officials in writing in the weeks before the assault that the officers "were planning to 'set him up' in the very manner that occurred on Sept. 2, 2001."
Kennedy, the assistant attorney general, said that the two officers denied claims of conspiring to have the inmate assault Caldwell.
State lawyers were no more successful with a second attempt later in 2002 to persuade the federal judge to dismiss Caldwell's case.
"There has been an unusual amount of evidence produced by [Caldwell] in this case supporting his allegation that the [officers] actively set up an assault against him and watched passively while the assault took place," Williams wrote in a memorandum dated June 18, 2002.
Caldwell's suit is still in the discovery stage, but another suit, by Norman R. Willis, is scheduled for trial in U.S. District Court in Baltimore later this month.
His complaints of abuse are among those the U.S. Justice Department's Civil Rights Division is reviewing.
In a letter dated Aug. 10, officials with the division notified Willis that the FBI had been asked to "conduct a preliminary investigation" of his complaints.
Willis claims he was targeted for repeated abuse for writing complaints against officers and rejecting their attempts to get him to assault other prisoners at WCI.
"You can be assured that if the evidence shows that there is a prosecutable violation of federal criminal civil rights statutes, appropriate action will be taken, " wrote Karla Dobinski, deputy chief of the criminal section of the agency's civil rights division.
In his suit, Willis alleges that WCI officers promised to protect him from a prison gang known as the Black Guerilla Family if he would assault another inmate. Willis claims that he later became the target of a similar inmate assault after filing a written complaint against an officer.
Willis described one incident early last year when he said he was taken out of his cell for complaining to an officer that inmates on his tier were denied their showers that day. As two officers escorted him off the tier, Willis claims, they punched and kicked him while he was handcuffed from behind.
In sworn statements, the officers denied assaulting Willis. They also disputed claims that they prevented Willis from filing complaints and had refused to allow a prison psychology department staffer to visit Willis in the housing unit.
But in his deposition, Clarence E. Hawkins Jr., a psychology associate at the prison, offered a different version of events.
He said that when he tried to visit Willis in the housing unit cell shortly after the alleged assault, an officer told him the inmate didn't want to see him.
"I thought that was rather odd, because I just felt like Mr. Willis did want to see me. So I told the officer that I wanted to see him," Hawkins said.
When Willis was brought in, Hawkins said, he noticed that one side of his face was bruised and the other side was swollen. In his sworn statement, Hawkins, who did not witness the alleged attack, said Willis told him he had been jumped by officers.
Hawkins said that he didn't write a report about what Willis told him, because the inmate feared further retaliation.
Hawkins, one of the few African-American staffers at WCI, said he had been rebuffed on a different occasion when he tried to intervene on Willis' behalf.
Hawkins said he spoke to an officer about Willis' treatment. That officer then went to Hawkins' boss and told her he was "interfering" in matters that were not his responsibility, he said.
"I don't even get respect, so I can understand a lot of the things Mr. Willis is saying," Hawkins said.
Umoja's lawsuit
A third lawsuit, filed by Faouly A. Umoja, was settled out of court earlier this year with a $1,000 payment to the inmate. Umoja, a onetime correctional officer and convicted drug dealer, was released from prison in January and lives in East Baltimore.
In an interview, Umoja said he agreed to settle for the small payment because his court-appointed lawyers believed it would be almost impossible to persuade a jury to accept the word of inmate witnesses over correctional officers if the case went to trial.
In his suit, Umoja claims that officers intentionally put him in a cell with an inmate who had a history of attacking others.
The inmate he identified as assaulting him on Sept. 1, 2001, Anthony Midgette, is the same one who is alleged to have assaulted Caldwell the next day at the direction of officers.
Umoja, who is black, claims officers then put him into a cell with another inmate who "is a known white supremacist."
He said that inmate physically assaulted him on a daily basis during the time they shared a cell, from Sept. 3 to Sept. 10, wrapping a shirt around his fist and punching him repeatedly in the back - a form of punishment that left no telltale marks.
Kennedy, the assistant state attorney general, declined to say why the state decided to settle Umoja's case.
However, he noted that only a small sum was paid and the state admitted no liability.
"I don't think that anything Umoja said was true," Kennedy said. "I absolutely don't think the case had any merit."
Legal scholars say it is unusual for inmate lawsuits to be settled out of court with payments to the inmate, or for such suits to proceed far past the early stages of legal proceedings.
"Courts tend to look with great suspicion on any lawsuits filed by prisoners because of the general litigious nature of that population," said Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University law professor who specializes in inmate issues.
"The problem is, some of these cases raise very significant [issues] that are often summarily dismissed," Turley said.
Referring to the Willis case, Turley said: "It is notable that this judge is giving these allegations serious consideration" by setting trial for this month.
Kennedy acknowledged that only a small fraction of inmate lawsuits that get filed ever reach the point of going to trial.
He said one or two a year might get that far in the legal process, and some years there are none that go to jury trial.
All three inmates who filed suits are no longer at WCI. Umoja finished his sentence and was released in January; Caldwell was relocated to a state prison in Utah; and Willis was transferred to Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown.
Inmate testifies in prison abuse suit
He says staff assaulted him at facility where Iko died; U.S. was probing other allegations
A state prison inmate testified in federal court in Baltimore yesterday that correctional officers at a Western Maryland prison abused him and arranged for other inmates to assault him over a two-year period because he frequently filed complaints about his treatment.
The inmate, Norman R. Willis, said he complained about the alleged abuse at the Western Correctional Institution to the U.S. Department of Justice, which recently confirmed it had been investigating similar allegations at the prison before another inmate died after a violent confrontation with officers April 30.
In describing one alleged assault, Willis said officers leaned him over a railing while he was handcuffed and later squeezed him between a door and the wall. He said he pleaded for a supervisor to intervene.
"I said, 'Lieutenant Riggleman, they're assaulting me," Willis told jurors. "Help me, man. ...You gonna help me?"
Willis said the lieutenant, Tommy Riggleman, responded with an obscenity and told him to be quiet.
The testimony came on the first day of trial in a federal civil lawsuit that casts additional scrutiny on the conduct of correctional officers at Western Correctional Institution, a medium-security prison near
Cumberland in Allegany County.
In addition to the Justice Department inquiry, the FBI is investigating the death of Ifeanyi A. Iko, whom correctional officers subdued with pepper spray and then fitted with a mesh spit mask. They found him motionless in a cell hours later, according to the autopsy report, inmates' accounts and other sources. A grand jury and an internal investigation did not result in charges against prison staff.
Willis, who is serving a sentence for robbery, is now confined at Roxbury Correctional Institution in Hagerstown. He is seeking $9.9 million in punitive and compensatory damages. The officers have denied that they mistreated Willis.
The trial offers a rare opportunity for an inmate's allegations of abuse from officers to be presented to a jury and the public. Such cases hardly ever go to trial, either because inmates' allegations are dismissed by courts or, in rarer cases, a settlement is reached.
Yesterday morning, 10 correctional officers and prison staffers -- nine men and one woman -- filed into the courtroom to begin their defense in front of U.S. District Judge Richard D. Bennett. Those staffers, some of whom no longer work at Western Correctional Institution, are: Leah Youngblood, Robert Huff, Floyd Farris, James Shreve, Steven Roach, Brian Clise, David Swanger, Gary Knight, Tommy Riggleman and Steven Shaffer. Because it is a civil trial, they will not face criminal penalties.
Tamal Banton, one of Willis' attorneys, said in his opening statement to jurors that Willis lived in an atmosphere of abuse at the hands of officers -- a violation of the Constitution's prohibition of "cruel and
unusual punishment." The alleged incidents took place between 2001 and last year, court records show.
"When he complained, that led to more abuses," Banton said. Banton said Willis was once an ally of the officers, who had directed him to assault other inmates in the past.
David Kennedy, an assistant attorney general defending the prison staffers, countered by telling jurors in his opening statement that Willis "concocted an elaborate story to pass his time in prison ... [and] he is the hero of his own story."
Kennedy called Willis' allegations "groundless" and part of a scheme to get the officers disciplined and moved from their jobs in the segregation housing unit where Willis was held in protective custody. Willis was assaulted by other inmates, but not "at the direction of officers," Kennedy said.
Clarence Hawkins, a psychology associate at the prison who counsels inmates and used to visit Willis once a week, testified that he was told on one occasion that Willis didn't want to see him.
Hawkins said Youngblood told him that Willis "didn't want to see me. She didn't refuse [to allow Hawkins to visit with him]. She just told me he didn't want to see me."
Hawkins testified that he insisted that he see Willis. When Willis was brought to the interview room, Hawkins noticed that he had bruises and swelling on his face, he said. Willis also told him his back was
injured, and that he had been "jumped" by several officers. Hawkins was uncertain about the date of the encounter.
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