Federal decide blasts W.Va. corrections officers for destroying, dropping proof

Judicial orders are sometimes a dry learn — technical and sprinkled with references to related court docket circumstances. Naturally, they’re significant to the legal professionals concerned, however to a layperson, me included, court docket rulings usually are not precisely the stuff of a John Grisham novel.

That’s the reason the order this week by U.S. Justice of the Peace Omar Aboulhosn stands aside. I’ll get to that in a minute, however first the background.

At concern is a lawsuit filed on behalf of inmates on the Southern Regional Jail in Beckley claiming inhuman situations. They contend inmates should sleep on the ground due to overcrowding, that they’re topic to bodily assaults from different inmates, that they’re disadvantaged of recurrently functioning sinks, bathrooms and showers, that the jail has black mildew and different unsanitary situations and that the jail is chronically understaffed.

On account of the go well with, the defendants — officers with the jail and the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (WVDCR) — are deposed, and attorneys for the inmates request any paperwork they consider are related to their case.

The legal professionals for the inmates (the plaintiffs) mentioned the WVDCR (the defendants) weren’t supplying all the knowledge requested (the invention course of), in order that they went to court docket.

That is the place the story takes a big flip.

Justice of the Peace Aboulhosn held a listening to, after which issued an order, and never simply any order; he crammed his 39-page order with scathing criticisms of how WVDCR has responded to the lawsuit. Listed here are just a few examples:

• He discovered that corrections officers destroyed or failed to save lots of proof even after the court docket informed the defendants to hold on to related emails, safety video and paper copies of inmate complaints. “The ONLY logical rationalization for the lack of this proof, is that it was deliberately destroyed,” Aboulhosn wrote.
• The decide mentioned the defendants displayed “unmitigated gall” in how they ignored requests for proof. “The Courtroom won’t flip a blind eye to the Defendants’ blatant vanity and flippant response to their authorized obligations.”
• Aboulhosn mentioned WVDCR has been derelict in its responsibility and has demonstrated “utter disregard for the Federal Guidelines of Civil Process, not to mention their very own insurance policies governing the preservation of discovery. To say the Courtroom discovered the testimony elicited from the Defendants stunning is a gross understatement.”  
• The decide mentioned since proof was “deliberately destroyed” and due to the defendants “pervasive and ongoing failures to abide by the foundations of discovery,” he really useful an order for “default judgement.”

Which means as a result of the defendants misplaced or destroyed proof and abused the invention course of, a remaining judgment will be entered that the inmates win their case. Any trial would solely be in regards to the quantity of damages, if any, the state is liable to pay. That is probably the most critical sanction obtainable to the court docket and it’s only utilized in probably the most egregious circumstances of misconduct.

That is an epic fail by the Division of Corrections, and in the end by the Justice administration, in how they’ve dealt with this. The documentation that’s now destroyed may have been an essential software not solely in court docket, but additionally for members of the general public, to evaluate whether or not state authorities is sufficiently and humanely overseeing the jails system.

Hoppy Kercheval is a MetroNews anchor and the longtime host of “Talkline.” Contact him at [email protected].