CLUTE, Texas (AP) - The private prison company under fire for the apparent taped abuse of Missouri inmates has deliberately violated a court order to deliver records to attorneys for 30 convicts suing the contractor, a federal judge said.
"They've either been hidden somewhere, or they've been destroyed," U.S. Magistrate Judge John Froeschner said during a hearing. "There is no other conclusion I can see."
In a videotape uncovered by The Facts, the daily newspaper of Brazoria County, inmates were shown being hit, shocked with stun guns and attacked by a police dog during a Sept. 18, 1996 shakedown at the county jail.
Capital Correctional Resources Inc. held out-of-state inmates at the jail in a deal with Brazoria County, which also is a defendant in the lawsuit and several others filed in Missouri. The Angleton jail is about 50 miles south of Houston.
Froeschner ordered CCRI to reimburse the inmates' attorneys for the time they spent arguing for sanctions, an amount inmate attorneys estimated to range between $5,000 and $8,000, according to The Facts.
Froeschner also promised to fine CCRI. He'll decide an amount before the scheduled Sept. 21 trial date, but plaintiffs' lawyers have suggested a $25,000 fine.
Karen Medick, former CCRI director of operations, testified during a hearing Friday in federal court in Galveston that she and several guards spent weeks going through more than 50 unmarked boxes of records in an attempt to comply with the 6-month-old order.
Those boxes were turned over the plaintiffs' attorneys, said Ms. Medick, who now works for CiviGenics Inc., the company that purchased CCRI's Texas assets.
Thirteen videotapes not turned over until last month had been misplaced after being transported out of state, said Jim Brewer, CCRI chief executive officer. The tapes were sent to the company's Jackson, Miss., office to avoid Texas' open records laws, he said.
"We were making sure (the videotapes) were maintained for the courts and not the press," Brewer said. "There were certain people on the jail commission trying to release information on CCRI any way they could."
Froeschner suggested during the hearing that company officials might have obstructed justice.
"People get indicted for that," Froeschner said.
CCRI attorney Otto Hewitt told Froeschner most documents have been handed over as requested.
"We have produced an enormous amount of stuff," Hewitt said. "Some of the records are incomplete, there is no doubt about that. CCRI has not been able to acquire or locate those records."
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