State board to consider $7M settlement

Man disabled in attack at since-closed Baltimore jail

Maryland’s spending board will consider next week whether to approve a $7 million settlement for lawsuits claiming that corruption within a since-closed Baltimore jail enabled the brutal beating of an inmate awaiting trial there in 2014.

The Office of the Attorney General and the Department of Public Safety and Correctional Services recommend the state Board of Public Works sign off on settling the state and federal complaints, describing a settlement as being “in the best interest of the State,” according to the agenda for the board’s March 1 meeting.

On Dec. 18, 2014, Daquan Wallace, then 20, was attacked at the Baltimore City Detention Center, leaving him in a coma for a month and permanently disabling him, according to the federal complaint.

The federal complaint, filed on behalf of Wallace and his mother, Nicole Wallace, alleged that correctional officials sanctioned the beating by conspiring with the Black Guerrilla Family gang, which had overrun the jail, to transfer Wallace, who had refused to join the gang, to a unit within the facility where inmates were waiting to jump him. Two correctional officers stood watch as three gang members “gruesomely beat Mr. Wallace and attempted to rape him.”

The proposed settlement represents continued fallout from corruption at the facility, which then-Gov. Larry Hogan, a Republican, called “one of the biggest failures of leadership in the history of the state” as he ordered the jail shut in 2015. That was about two years after the U.S. Attorney’s Office for Maryland brought an indictment against more than 20 correctional officers for conspiring with the gang.

The facility’s closure “came too late for many of those in custody who had already suffered irreversible harm from the facility’s conditions, especially Mr. Wallace, who will be permanently disfigured and disabled,” Wallace’s attorneys wrote in the federal complaint.

A Baltimore jury in 2019 awarded Wallace, who is confined to a wheelchair, $25 million in damages for a lawsuit on the same allegations in state court.

The federal lawsuit alleged violations of the U.S. and Maryland constitutions as well as gross negligence, civil conspiracy, assault and intentional infliction of emotional distress.

The proposed settlement seeks to resolve both lawsuits, Wallace’s attorney, Cary J. Hansel, told The Baltimore Sun.

Hansel said in an interview that Wallace, whom he described as a “charming,” was attacked while awaiting trial years ago because his family couldn’t afford the $800 bail. Today, Wallace only has limited function in one arm and is mute. Hansel said Wallace can communicate via text message, but requires full-time care from his family.

He described the settlement as modest, given Wallace’s medical needs, and said it was his client’s “only chance at anything approaching a normal life and anything approaching justice.”

“It will save a Baltimore family and take a step in the direction of correcting a historic injustice,” Hansel said.

The office of Attorney General Anthony Brown, a Democrat, declined to comment. A spokesman for the department of corrections referred comment to the attorney general’s office.

Recently elected Gov. Wes Moore and Comptroller Brooke Lierman, both Democrats, sit on the Board of Public Works alongside state Democratic Treasurer Dereck Davis. At a previous meeting, Davis has expressed frustration regarding settlements between state agencies and members of the public, particularly the Maryland State Police.

According to the federal complaint, Wallace repeatedly complained to correctional officials about being targeted by the Black Guerrilla Family. When the officers did little to allay Wallace’s concerns, he told his mother about the assaults.

In turn, Nicole Wallace began contacting detention center administrators, pleading with them to take the threats against her son seriously, even asking that he be placed in protective custody. Instead of helping, the federal complaint says officers retaliated against Wallace.

On Dec. 2, 2014, two weeks before the attack that left him in a wheelchair, medical staff at the jail treated cuts and bruises on Wallace’s face, according to the federal complaint. He was taken for a court hearing on the nonviolent charges he was facing later the same morning, and was attacked in transit to the courthouse.

City Circuit Judge Jeffrey Geller noted Wallace’s injuries, the federal complaint says, but declined to review his bail. With his eye nearly swollen shut, Wallace was taken back to the detention center.

The federal complaint says correctional officers falsified papers claiming Wallace was stealing from and extorting other inmates in order to transfer him to a wing of the jail where more violent offenders, including Black Guerrilla Family members, were held. Two guards testified that they knew they were supposed to take Wallace to solitary confinement rather than the other wing based on the allegations they trumped up against him.

“There was no reason for the transfer ... other than to facilitate the subsequent beating and attempted rape of Mr. Wallace,” Hansel wrote in the federal complaint.

In the other jail wing, guards ordered Wallace’s new cellmate to leave for dinner early and dismissed other detainees to go eat shortly thereafter, according to the complaints. Wallace and inmates from three other cells were kept back.

Guards released the inmates from three other cells and opened the door to Wallace’s. The federal complaint says the correctional officers watched the attack unfold.

Wallace’s new cellmate returned from dinner to find him unresponsive on his bunk, blood spattered on the adjacent wall, according to the lawsuit.

Hansel told The Sun none of the correctional employees were punished as a result of the events surrounding Wallace’s attack.

The federal lawsuit said Wallace suffered “a severe traumatic brain injury.”

“To this date,” Hansel wrote in an amended federal complaint filed more than four years after the attack, “Mr. Wallace is unable to talk or walk, remains on a ventilator to assist in his breathing function, and requires daily twenty-four care.”

The lawsuit already had overcome several legal hurdles by the time of the proposed settlement.

In March 2020, U.S. District Judge Catherine C. Blake ruled that the correctional officers named in the complaint were not eligible for qualified immunity. She dismissed several counts, but allowed the lawsuit to continue. Two years later, Blake again allowed a portion of the lawsuit to proceed.

There were settlement conferences in April and May 2022. Then, online court records show, it appeared as though the case was headed to trial.