Seventh Dublin prison officer gets prison time for sex crimes

Another guard at the federal women’s prison in Dublin has been sentenced to prison for sexually attacking inmates, the seventh former officer to be punished for abuse at the scandal-plagued institution.

Nakie Nunley, who pleaded guilty in September to 10 felony charges involving five women at the Federal Correctional Institution, was sentenced to six years in federal prison Wednesday by U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers. Federal sentencing guidelines for the crimes recommend a term of 33-41 months, but Gonzalez Rogers agreed with prosecutors that Nunley’s offenses were serious enough to justify a longer sentence.

Nunley, 48, of Fairfield, worked at the prison industries center known as UNICOR, where he supervised inmates in the call center. In his guilty plea, he admitted that between March 2020 and November 2021 he had oral and digital sex with people incarcerated in the facility after harassing and manipulating them.

He said he called one woman and her girlfriend, also imprisoned there, into his office and told them he would not report the two women’s relationship if they “showed me something.” He said he told another woman he knew she was applying for “compassionate release,” which can be granted to inmates who are gravely ill or have other serious medical needs, and implied he would oppose her request unless she agreed to sexual contact.

“Nunley used his power to repeatedly demean, intimidate, threaten, harass, and sexually abuse seven inmates under his care and protection,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Molly Priedeman wrote in a filing calling for a six-year sentence. “When multiple women told him to stop, he laughed in their faces.”

Defense attorney Tim Pori argued for a term of no more than three years and five months, the maximum recommended by the U.S. Sentencing Commission guidelines, but the judge sentenced Nunley to 72 months in prison.

“Nakie Nunley egregiously exploited his authority by sexually abusing multiple incarcerated women and then retaliating against those who blew the whistle,” Deputy U.S. Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement announcing the sentence.

The prison’s former warden, Ray Garcia, was sentenced to five years and 10 months in prison last March after being convicted of sexually abusing three prisoners. Former prison chaplain James Highhouse was sentenced to seven years in prison in 2022 after pleading guilty to five charges of sexually abusing a prisoner and lying about it to investigators. Another four former staff members have been convicted or pleaded guilty.

The U.S. Bureau of Prisons has brought in a series of interim wardens to succeed Garcia and says it is working to end abuse at FCI Dublin, which has about 650 incarcerated people.

But Gonzalez Rogers, who has presided over the cases, said this month that the Bureau of Prisons hasn’t shown it can run the prison safely or protect its imprisoned people. On March 15, she announced that she would appoint an overseer, known as a special master, to monitor officials’ compliance with the law. It will be the first such appointment in federal prison history.