Lawsuit: Guards beat, taunt inmate with, 'You can't breathe'

Advocates for prisoners’ rights have filed a civil rights lawsuit against state corrections officers who allegedly ignored requirements that they videotape a prison-cell encounter with an inmate who says he was sexually abused, beaten without provocation and taunted with words that evoked the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of police.

The New Mexico Prison & Jail Project filed the civil lawsuit Tuesday seeking damages in U.S. District Court on behalf of a Black inmate against five state Corrections Department officers, in connection with an April 2021 confrontation at the Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility in Clayton.

The advocacy group reconstructed events from the testimony of the plaintiff and other inmate witnesses, along with unredacted portions of an internal investigation by the Correction Department’s Office of Professional Conduct.

Officers told investigators that the inmate was restrained physically and with pepper spray after swinging an elbow at an officer. They denied the inmate's account of abuses.

Several of the officers acknowledged to Corrections Department investigators that a video camera should have been used inside the cell.

“Its use could have prevented questions, provided answers and the truth would have come out,” one officer told investigators.

Prison & Jail Project Director Steven Robert Allen said video recordings were required because the use of force by corrections officers was planned and not reactive. A copy of agency policy was not immediately available.

Corrections Department spokeswoman Carmelina Hart said the agency does not comment on pending litigation. She said four corrections officers out of five in the complaint still work at the agency.

The lawsuit alleges that corrections officers retaliated against the plaintiff after he spoke out earlier in support of another inmate who was surrounded by officers. Those events also are chronicled in a separate 2022 lawsuit alleging battery and sexual abuse by corrections officers against another inmate.

The new lawsuit says at least five corrections officers and a manager later entered the plaintiff’s cell and ordered a cellmate to leave.

The lawsuit alleges that one officer pushed his crotch up against the plaintiff’s backside. It says the plaintiff objected and wasn't provoked into retaliating, but he was thrown to the ground and beaten.

The lawsuit alleges that the plaintiff was face-down on the ground, when a corrections officer placed a foot on his back and said, “Let me guess, you can’t breathe.”

Attorneys for the Prison & Jail Project say that the date of the encounter on April 15, 2021, corresponded with the trial of former Minneapolis Police officer Derek Chauvin for pinning George Floyd to the pavement with his knee on the Black man’s neck in a case that triggered worldwide protests and a reexamination of racism and policing in the U.S.

Chauvin was convicted on murder and manslaughter charges on April 20, 2021. The centerpiece of the case was the excruciating bystander video of Floyd gasping repeatedly, “I can’t breathe.”

The inmate in New Mexico “thought he was going to die, and why wouldn’t he?” Allen said. “That kind of terrorizing of a Black prisoner in a prison here in New Mexico is completely unacceptable.”

The lawsuit alleges battery, cruel and unusual punishment and violations of free speech rights, seeking unspecified compensation.

The inmate initially filed an administrative complaint under provisions of the Prison Rape Elimination Act. It is unclear whether officers were disciplined. No criminal charges have been filed. The inmate is serving a sentence after pleading guilty to armed robbery in 2016.