Current:Home > ContactWest Virginia corrections officers plead guilty to not intervening as colleagues fatally beat inmate -VitalWealth Strategies
West Virginia corrections officers plead guilty to not intervening as colleagues fatally beat inmate
View
Date:2025-04-24 23:55:33
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Two West Virginia correctional officers accused of failing to intervene as their colleagues beat an incarcerated man to death in 2022 pleaded guilty in federal court Thursday.
Former Southern Regional Jail employees Jacob Boothe and Ashley Toney admitted to violating 37-year-old Quantez Burks’s civil rights by not protecting him from being physically assaulted by other correctional officers.
Toney and Boothe, who appeared before U.S. District Court Judge Joseph R. Goodwin in Charleston, were among six former correctional officers indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2023.
Burks was a pretrial detainee at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver who died less than a day after he was booked into the jail on a wanton endangerment charge in March 2022.
The case drew scrutiny to conditions and deaths at the Southern Regional Jail. In November 2023, West Virginia agreed to pay $4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by inmates who described conditions at the jail as inhumane. The lawsuit filed in 2022 on behalf of current and former inmates cited such complaints as a lack of access to water and food at the facility, as well as overcrowding and fights that were allowed to continue until someone was injured.
According to court documents, Burks tried to push past an officer to leave his housing unit. Burks then was escorted to an interview room where correctional officers are accused of striking Burks while he was restrained and handcuffed. He was later forcibly moved to a prison cell in another housing unit, where he was assaulted again.
The state medical examiner’s office attributed Burks’ primary cause of death to natural causes, prompting the family to have a private autopsy conducted. The family’s attorney revealed at a news conference last year that the second autopsy found the inmate had multiple areas of blunt force trauma on his body.
As part of their plea agreement, Toney and Boothe admitted to escorting Burks to an interview room, they watched as other officers struck and injured him while he was restrained, handcuffed and posed no threat to anyone. The two officers said officers struck Burks “in order to punish him for attempting to leave his assigned pod,” according to a press release from the U.S. Department of Justice.
In her plea agreement, Toney further admitted to knowing that the interview room to which officers brought Burks was a “blind spot” at the jail with no surveillance cameras.
Toney also admitted that she conspired with other officers to provide false information during the investigation of Burks’ death.
Toney and Boothe each face a maximum penalty of 10 years in prison and a fine of up to $250,000. Sentencing hearings are scheduled for Nov. 4. Trial for the remaining four defendants is scheduled for Oct. 8.
veryGood! (1835)
Related
- NHL in ASL returns, delivering American Sign Language analysis for Deaf community at Winter Classic
- Destroying ‘Forever Chemicals’ is a Technological Race that Could Become a Multibillion-dollar Industry
- Save 44% On the Too Faced Better Than Sex Mascara and Everyone Will Wonder if You Got Lash Extensions
- Extreme Makeover: Home Edition’s Ty Pennington Hospitalized 2 Days After Barbie Red Carpet
- John Galliano out at Maison Margiela, capping year of fashion designer musical chairs
- Utilities Seize Control of the Coming Boom in Transmission Lines
- Women Are Less Likely to Buy Electric Vehicles Than Men. Here’s What’s Holding Them Back
- How State Regulators Allowed a Fading West Texas Town to Go Over Four Years Without Safe Drinking Water
- NFL Week 15 picks straight up and against spread: Bills, Lions put No. 1 seed hopes on line
- America’s Forests Are ‘Present and Vanishing at the Same Time’
Ranking
- Can Bill Belichick turn North Carolina into a winner? At 72, he's chasing one last high
- The Most-Cited Number About the Inflation Reduction Act Is Probably Wrong, and That Could Be a Good Thing
- Climate Change Wiped Out Thousands of the West’s Most Iconic Cactus. Can Planting More Help a Species that Takes a Century to Mature?
- Activists Slam Biden Administration for Reversing Climate and Equity Guidance on Highway Expansions
- Civic engagement nonprofits say democracy needs support in between big elections. Do funders agree?
- Environmentalists Want the FTC Green Guides to Slam the Door on the ‘Chemical’ Recycling of Plastic Waste
- Women Are Less Likely to Buy Electric Vehicles Than Men. Here’s What’s Holding Them Back
- Tennis Star Naomi Osaka Shares First Photo of Baby Girl Shai
Recommendation
NFL Week 15 picks straight up and against spread: Bills, Lions put No. 1 seed hopes on line
California Enters ‘Uncharted Territory’ After Cutting Payments to Rooftop Solar Owners by 75 Percent
Khloe Kardashian Defends Blac Chyna From Twisted Narrative About Co-Parenting Dream Kardashian
Roundup, the World’s Favorite Weed Killer, Linked to Liver, Metabolic Diseases in Kids
$73.5M beach replenishment project starts in January at Jersey Shore
What to Know About Suspected Long Island Serial Killer Rex Heuermann
‘Green Steel’ Would Curb Carbon Emissions, Spur Economic Revival in Southwest Pennsylvania, Study Says
Intensifying Cycle of Extreme Heat And Drought Grips Europe