Jail-fight suit dismissed; lack of evidence cited

Judge says officers not blameless

FORT SMITH — A federal judge has dismissed a lawsuit brought by a federal prisoner in the Benton County jail who said jailers used excessive force against him.

Eastern Arkansas’ U.S. District Judge J. Leon Holmes ruled James Clayton Solomon didn’t prove his allegations filed in 2010 in federal court. Holmes also wrote jailers weren’t blameless in causing a fight that led to Solomon’s charges against them.

“Solomon failed to prove by a preponderance of the evidence that any defendant used excessive force against him maliciously or sadistically to cause harm,” Holmes wrote in the 18-page decision filed Tuesday. “Although the officers handled the situation poorly, and the struggle during which Solomon suffered minor injuries was partially their fault, those facts do not give rise to a constitutional violation.”

Solomon, 47, said in his lawsuit two deputy marshals threatened him with retaliation after he wrote a letter to U.S. District Judge Robert Dawson in April 2008 saying he hoped Dawson would die a slow and painful death from a disease.

He had written the letter, and a false suicide note, after Dawson sentenced him to five years in prison for violating his supervised release on a federal drug conviction in Oklahoma. Before he was to self-report to prison, Solomon absconded and ended up in Los Angeles, where he was arrested in April 2008.

The deputy marshals, Solomon charged, also told deputies in the Benton County jail, where he was held in federal custody, to punish him for writing the letter to Dawson. He accused jailers of beating him in two instances, in May and August 2008.

The deputies accused of throwing a blanket over Solomon and beating him in May were dismissed from the lawsuit by the judge because there was no evidence identifying any deputies involved, Holmes ruled. The two deputy marshals also were dismissed from the lawsuit during the three-day trial last week.

Holmes ruled Solomon wasn’t a credible witness. He had written the false suicide note, taken on an alias with false identification and lied to marshals when he was arrested in California.

On the witness stand, Solomon said he wrote the letter to U.S. District Judge Jimm Hendren and seemed surprised when he was reminded he wrote the letter to Dawson, Holmes wrote.

Solomon had said in the lawsuit he identified several people involved in the blanket party beating who either didn’t work for the sheriff’s office at the time or weren’t in the building at the time of the supposed beating, Holmes’ decision said.

According to trial testimony, the beating in August 2008 occurred when deputies responded to Solomon kicking and banging on his cell door, a violation of jail regulations. Deputies took Solomon by the arms and placed his hands against the wall, after which he spun around and tried to hit one of the deputies.

That led to a struggle during which deputies “kneed him” in the thighs several times and stunned him twice with a Taser.

Holmes criticized the deputies for exacerbating the situation needlessly by putting their hands on Solomon to get his hands on the wall, to which Solomon responded aggressively.

Holmes pointed out three things that made him suspicious of the jailers’ stories: For one, the day after the fight, Solomon called his attorney, who sent an assistant to check on Solomon’s injuries. The assistant was denied access to Solomon. The attorney then went to the jail and had to threaten to notify Hendren before deputies allowed him to see Solomon.

Second, there was evidence, Holmes wrote, a deputy took photographs of Solomon’s injuries, but the photographs disappeared and no deputy could say what happened to them.

Lastly, no one wrote a disciplinary report against Solomon for fighting with the deputies even though he was written up the next day for making threatening comments, Holmes wrote.

According to trial testimony, the beating in August 2008 occurred when deputies responded to Solomon kicking and banging on his cell door, a violation of jail regulations.