Garner faces wrongful death suit
NEWTOWN — A Garner Correctional Institution inmate in handcuffs and leg shackles begged for his life as guards beat him to death, according to an attorney representing the man’s family.
“In the name of God and Jesus Christ, please let me go,” said the inmate, J’Allen Jones, according to attorney Paul Spinella.
Jones’ plea for mercy is part of a wrongful death lawsuit expected to be filed in state Superior Court this week against Department of Correction Commissioner Scott Semple and 10 prison guards, stemming from the fatal March 25 beating.
The DOC declined to comment on the allegations outside of court.
The attorney’s version of events is dramatically dif- ferent from accounts provided by Semple in March.
“There are no immediate indications suggesting that excessive force was utilized,” Semple said at the time. He said Jones was being transported to the prison’s mental health unit when he became “noncompliant and combative.” Life- saving measures were performed, the DOC said, and Jones was sent to a
local hospital, where he died about an hour later.
The state’s medical examiner’s office ruled the death a homicide, determining that Jones suffered a “sudden death during a struggle and restraint with chest compression and pepper spray exposure.”
Spinella told Hearst Connecticut Media that was only part of the story.
The beating was so bad, he said, that Jones’ body was covered with bruises when his family identified his remains — an ordeal that continues to haunt his mother. Relatives said his neck appeared to be broken and falling off to one side, the attorney said.
“They put him into a wheelchair after the beating, but he already appeared to be dead at that point,” said Spinella, whose investigator viewed surveillance footage. “This was a man who was tortured and beaten to death when he was completely vulnerable and had no way of protecting himself.”
The DOC has not released the surveillance video to the public.
State Police are handling the investigation and declined to comment last week.
The lawsuit would be the second legal action in as many weeks against DOC officials concerning the prison.
A lawsuit filed in Superior Court in Waterbury claimed that inmates and correction officers have been exposed to dangerously high levels of radon in the building. Tests performed in 2014 showed unusually high levels of the odorless radioactive gas in the prison, but the inmates were never notified, the suit claimed.
The DOC declined to comment on the litigation.
The state Attorney General’s office, which defends the DOC in court, also declined to comment.
Jones, 31, was due to be released from Garner within months and planned to start a new career as a welder to help support his family, Spinella said.
Jones was serving a sixyear sentence after pleading guilty to charges in an armed robbery of a Waterbury gas station.
“We have no idea what prompted the attack,” Spi- nelli said. “Maybe they didn’t like him. ... But the important point is that they did this and it was the grossest possible violation of their duties.”
The attorney said officers who participated in the beating are still working at the prison.
“They haven’t even been put on a suspension or leave,” Spinella said. “They are roaming the halls of that prison, which is putting all of the prisoners’ lives at risk.”