A federal grand jury on Tuesday charged four Alabama correctional officers with federal civil rights and obstruction of justice charges connected to the beating of an inmate in 2018.
The U.S. Department of Justice in a press release Tuesday said that a grand jury indicted Sergeant Keith Finch and corrections officers Jordan Thomas and Kevin Blaylock with deprivation of rights under color of law. Thomas and Sergeant Orlanda Walker are also charged with obstruction of justice.
According to the press release, the indictment alleges that on Sept. 12, 2018, at the Bibb Correctional Facility, Thomas and Blaylock kicked and hit an inmate, who was on the ground and in a fetal position, with their batons after he ran out of his cell.
“As a result of this unjustified use of force, the prisoner sustained bodily injury. Thomas and his supervisor, Walker, then obstructed justice by filing false reports that claimed ‘all force ceased’ once the prisoner was on the ground,” the DOJ said in the release.
The indictments come five days after the DOJ released a report detailing systemic violence against inmates at the hands of Alabama Department of Corrections officers. The federal government believes systemic use of excessive force within Alabama’s prisons for men violates the Eighth Amendment.
The report details explicit, serious assaults of inmates, cover-ups by officers and their superiors, and ineffective, substandard investigations by ADOC’s investigative arm, the Investigations and Intelligence Division.
