Four Missouri prison guards were charged with murder and a fifth with involuntary manslaughter on Friday. The case involved the December death of a Black man who died after officers pepper-sprayed him while in custody at a correctional facility and covered his face, according to a complaint filed Friday. Guards at the Jefferson City Correctional Center on Dec. 8 pepper-sprayed 38-year-old Othel Moore Jr., placed a mask over his face that impeded his breathing and placed him in a position where he suffocated. An attorney for Moore’s family, Andrew Stroth, said Moore was bleeding from his ears and nose and several inmates heard Moore screaming that he couldn’t breathe, according to the AP. “There is a system, a pattern and a practice of racist and unconstitutional abuse in the Missouri Department of Corrections and particularly in the Jefferson City Correction(al) Center,” Stroth said.
Stroth added: “It’s George Floyd 3.0 in a prison.” The indictment charges Justin Leggins, Jacob Case, Aaron Brown and Gregory Varner with one count each of second-degree murder and one count of aiding and abetting second-degree assault. A fifth guard, Bryanne Bradshaw, is charged with aiding and abetting manslaughter. The indictment says Leggins and Case sprayed pepper spray in Moore’s face while Brown placed a mask over his face that impeded Moore’s ability to breathe. The indictment says Varner and Bradshaw left Moore in a position that led to his suffocation. The Missouri Department of Corrections released a statement Friday saying Moore died in a restraint system designed to prevent injury to himself and others, and the agency has stopped using that system.
The Department of Corrections also said after the criminal investigation and its own internal review that 10 of the people involved in the incident “are no longer employed by the department or its contractors.” The department said it “will not tolerate any conduct or conditions that endanger the well-being of Missourians working or living in our facilities” and has “begun installing body-worn cameras in the detention areas of maximum-security prisons … to strengthen both safety and accountability.” Attorneys for Moore’s mother and sister planned to file a civil lawsuit against the officers and the Department of Corrections on Friday. The officers were part of what is known as the Corrections Emergency Response Team, according to the lawsuit. Attorneys for the Moore family describe the team as “a group that uses coercive measures to abuse, intimidate and threaten inmates.”
(More stories from Missouri.)
