Prison guard acquitted in inmate’s death

TDCJ sergeant cleared of aggravated assault after slamming handcuffed man to ground

A Texas prison sergeant who slammed a handcuffed prisoner to the ground so hard he died will not serve any jail time after a Brazoria County jury found him not guilty of aggravated assault for his role in the death of 41-year-old David Witt.

The verdict vindicated Lou Joffrion and his attorney, who argued in court that the former Darrington Unit guard’s use of force two years ago was justified.

“The question was if he used too much force, and that really was a subjective thing,” said attorney Connie Williams, who represented Joffrion at his trial last month in Brazoria County. “But the jury took into consideration the difficulty of the job, the stress from inmates, and of course they took into consideration the inmate’s conduct.”

The courtroom outcome came as a sore disappointment both to Witt’s family and to inmate advocates, who described the encounter as “legalized brutality.” Surveillance video from the Rosharon lockup, reviewed this week by the Houston Chronicle, offers a stark visual account of Witt’s final encounter with Joffrion — who officials said had already been disciplined for previously slamming the prisoner to the ground a few months earlier.

“I’m still in shock,” said the slain prisoner’s older sister, Naoma Denman. “I can’t believe that after all this evidence that they had, he just got away with it.”

A spokesman for the Texas Department of Criminal Justice did not respond to a request for comment.

Witt’s problems started in the

Darrington Unit day room around 5 a.m. Aug. 16, 2017. All the other prisoners had already returned to their cells, but Witt refused.

That wasn’t uncommon, according to Jack Choate, executive director of the Special Prosecution Unit, which handles Texas prison criminal cases. Witt was known to have mental health problems and often refused to comply with orders. It was the sort of behavior that netted the North Texas man a slew of disciplinary infractions, frequently for nonviolent outbursts and disobeying orders.

That morning, officers tried working with Witt, and Lt. Sule Idris made a prolonged effort to coax him back into his cell. The day-room video camera showed the two men talking calmly, until Joffrion came in. Then, Witt appeared to get agitated and walked to the other side of the room, at one point stripping off all of his clothes before putting them back on a few minutes later.

He started walking out of the day room, pushing over an orange water cooler on his way out, apparently angering Joffrion. The sergeant rushed up from behind, and video shows him miming a punching motion with his hands. The interaction moved out into the sally port area, where a captain arrived on scene and Witt became compliant enough to let Idris cuff his hands behind his back.

But as the officers started leading Witt away, he jerked in the opposite direction. In response, Joffrion grabbed him from behind, stretching his arms around the 128-pound prisoner’s waist and lifting him out of his slip-on shoes and more than a foot off the ground before slamming him to the floor.

For a few moments, Witt lay motionless on the concrete. The officers didn’t know it at the time, but Choate said the force had ruptured Witt’s liver and he’d begun bleeding internally. The wounded prisoner staggered to his knees with the help of two officers, according to video footage. He was unable to walk and fell to the ground.

The guards called for a stretcher, and Witt was eventually flown to a hospital in Galveston, where he died after two hours of emergency surgery. Joffrion was recommended for termination two days later, though he chose to resign.

Initially, prison officials did not record the death as a homicide, the agency’s monthly Emergency Action Center reports show. And no one explained to Witt’s family what happened until months later.

“I thought that another inmate had killed him,” his mother, Rosemary, told the Chronicle earlier this year. She didn’t find out what happened until prosecutors contacted her, saying they had video of her son’s death and planned to pursue criminal charges against the guard.

Even after recommending Joffrion for termination, prison officials blamed Witt, alleging he was on drugs.

“While the use of force was deemed excessive in the investigation,” TDCJ Executive Director Bryan Collier said in May, “an autopsy of offender Witt did find the presence of fentanyl, an extremely powerful synthetic opioid, which could explain the actions which prompted the use of force.”

According to Choate, evidence ultimately showed that Witt was given the painkiller by medical professionals treating him after he was wounded.

From the beginning, Joffrion’s attorney has maintained that his client followed protocol.

“There are some suggestions that he slammed him too hard,” Williams said before trial. “But there was no intent to kill anybody.”

Under the law, Choate said, prison guards are allowed to use some force to maintain security. “In this case, we felt like the force being used here was excessive to the degree needed to control David Witt,” Choate said, “but that was a question for the jury to answer.”

In the lead-up to trial, prosecutors offered Joffrion a 25-year sentence in a plea deal. He rejected the agreement, and Brazoria County District Attorney Jeri Yenne said she’d suspected it would be a difficult case to prosecute — not so much because Witt was a prisoner, but because he died as the result of blunt force trauma. In such cases, she said, it’s often difficult to convince a jury of a defendant’s intent unlike in an armed assault.

“This verdict could have happened in the free world or in prison,” Yenne said. “Sometimes the individual does not realize that that one punch or one slam is going to cause death, so those cases are tougher.”

To inmate advocates, though, the verdict represents a disappointing lack of accountability for officers.

“This happens over and over and we hear the same and nothing ever happens, so there’s nothing to fear,” said Jennifer Erschabek of the Texas Inmate Families Association. “This is legalized brutality.”