CHARLESTON — Several lawsuits against the state's jail system regarding conditions are continuing through federal court.
Last week, the case involving Thomas Sheppheard, Tyler Randall and Adam Perry again Gov. Jim Justice and W.Va. Department of Homeland Security Cabinet Secretary Mark Sorsaia had a discovery hearing.
"The hearing was really the scope of discovery and whether, you know, how many jails that DCR and DHS, the governor's office have to turn over information for, whether Gov. Justice and Chief of Staff Abraham have to testify. And the judge gave us some guidance and we've had some conversations," Steve New, attorney for the plaintiffs, said in an interview with The West Virginia Record. "There is now a follow-up hearing in Huntington before Magistrate Judge Eifert on June 20. That's going to lay out the scope of the discovery."
New
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New said in addition to the Sheppheard statewide injunction lawsuit that's trying to get the Justice Administration to spend about another $200 million to completely fix corrections, the Rose case — which is the case involving Michale D. Rose and Edward L. Harmon has class members alleging U.S. Constitutional Amendment violations and overcrowding in the Southern Regional Jail — is paused right now and they are awaiting a lot of decisions from Judge Frank Volk in that case.
The Rose case noted that the jail was designed to hold 468 inmates, but in 2020 the jail held 711 inmates and had a 12-month daily population average of 640 inmates. The jail, at that time, was at 166% capacity.
In 2021, the jail had a population of 681 inmates and an average daily population of 717 inmates, the complaint stated.
The Rose case plaintiffs claim the jail was so overcrowded, there were three and sometimes four inmates housed in a two-person scale and one correctional officer even recalled as many as six inmates housed in a two-person cell.
"As a result of persistent overcrowding at SRJ, many inmates are forced to sleep on the floor of their cell," the complaint states. "In addition, as a result of persistent overcrowding at SRJ, many inmates are regularly forced to live and sleep on the dayroom floor of their pod."
There are also several individual cases New and his team are working on that involve the jail system
"Otherwise, there are a lot of individual cases that are moving forward, primarily against the medical defendants, Prime Care and Wexford, but those are individual-type cases for what we allege is substandard medical care," New said. "So, we probably have five individual cases going right now."
New said those cases include the case of Ricky Wriston, which was settled with the state for $925,000 and is moving forward against the medical defendants, Prime Care and its employees.
Wriston, who died at Southern Regional Jail in 2023, just hours after his arrest, was only 45 years old and was a father of five children. He was arrested for charges related to public intoxication. Jail officials have not offered much in the way of details on how Wriston died.
"There is also the Burks case, which settled against the state for $1,000,000," New said. "We are also pursuing the medical providers, Prime Care and its nursing and physician staff as well because long before Quantez Burks was beaten by those guards, he should have been out of the Southern Regional Jail because he was having a heart attack and Prime Care failed to recognize that."
Last year, a former Southern Regional Jail corrections officer, Andrew Fleshman, pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges in Burks' death. His sentencing was recently postponed until August.
Nicholas Wimmer also pleaded guilty to conspiracy charges related to Burks' death. Five officers, in addition to Fleshman and Wimmer, were charged with assaulting Burks and their lieutenant was charged with conspiring with them to cover up the beatings when investigations began into the case.
In the Burks civil suit, the family claims a nurse at the jail was present when Burks was being beaten, but that nurse did not provide medical help.
After nearly two years, the state of emergency that had previously been issued in 2022 over staffing levels in the jails was officially lifted in May.
Justice issued the state of emergency in August 2022 to address the critical staffing shortages. At one point there were nearly 350 National Guard members staffing the state's jails.
"While I appreciate that the National Guard no longer has to be necessary to staff the jails, I do believe that it's a little premature to declare that the state of emergency is over when there's still $156 million of overdue maintenance that's due," New said.