Tensions are running high between guards and inmates at a D.C. jail housing many of the defendants in Jan. 6 cases, with at least one of those prisoners alleging that he was brutally beaten by correctional officers.
For weeks, Capitol riot defendants being held in Washington have complained that they are locked in their cells with virtually no human contact for 23 hours a day. But a startling, graphic account offered publicly in court on Tuesday by one such inmate, Ronald Sandlin, went further: alleging that guards have subjected those charged in the Jan. 6 events to violence, threats and verbal harassment.
“Myself and others involved in the Jan. 6 incident are scared for their lives, not from each other but from correctional officers,” Sandlin said during a bail hearing conducted by video before U.S. District Court Judge Dabney Friedrich. “I don’t understand how this is remotely acceptable,” he added, saying he was being subjected to “mental torture.”
In an unusual direct plea to the judge, Sandlin said another Capitol riot defendant, Ryan Samsel, “was severely beaten by correctional officers, [is now] blind in one eye, has a skull fracture and detached retina.”
Sandlin also described racial tension between minority guards and the largely white defendants, some of whom have been publicly accused of membership in or association with white supremacist groups.
Sandlin said guards tackled “to the ground” one high-profile prisoner, Richard Barnett, 60, who was photographed with his boot up on a desk in Speaker Nancy Pelosi’s office. Sandlin said one of the guards declared, “I hate all white people and your honky religion.”
The three defendants raising alarms are charged with a wide range of crimes related to the Capitol breach.
Defense attorneys for Samsel and Barnett confirmed the episodes described in court by Sandlin, which they said they learned about from their clients, clients’ family members and other attorneys.
“There is a pattern of abuse and of targeting of the defendants who are being held pursuant to what happened on Jan. 6,” said Joseph McBride of New York, a defense lawyer for Barnett. “It is targeted. It is ruthless. It is nonstop.”
Steven Metcalf, a lawyer for Samsel, said that after his client complained last month about slow delivery of toilet paper, he was zip-tied, moved to a cell outside the view of surveillance cameras and brutally beaten by guards.
“I have seen Ryan. He has two black eyes to this day, two weeks later. All the skin is ripped off both wrists, which shows the zip ties and how tight they were,” said Metcalf, also from New York. “Other inmates said his face looked like a tomato that was stomped on.”
“We intend on filing a lawsuit against the two specific guards and the facility responsible for this scenario because Ryan Samsel did not deserve to get targeted and treated like this,” Metcalf added.
Another attorney for Samsel, Elisabeth Pasqualini, said that her client was moved to another “undisclosed” location earlier on Tuesday and that the episode in which he was injured last month was under investigation by the FBI.
A spokesperson for the jail system said the matter was under federal investigation.
This is an excerpt from Politico.
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