PANAMA CITY — The five correctional officers who were fired and arrested in connection with an orchestrated prison beating have pleaded not guilty to the charges against them in federal court.
However, prosecutors have said the attack on Jeremiah L. Tatum, 31, was planned as an act of jailhouse retaliation.
Former Florida Department of Corrections (DOC) officers William Finch, James Perkins, Robert Miller, Christopher Christmas and Dalton Riley appeared Thursday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of Florida to hear the charges against them. The five men have been indicted on charges of violating Tatum’s civil rights at the Northwest Florida Reception Center (NWFRC) in Washington County during an Aug. 5 prison beating.
All five officers pleaded not guilty to charges of violating Tatum’s civil rights, including the right to not endure cruel and unusual punishment. Each of the two counts carry a 10-year prison sentence. A trial date in April has been set for the case.
According to the indictment filed by the U.S. Attorney’s Office, the attack allegedly was orchestrated by former Capt. James Kirkland as retaliation on Tatum. Kirkland and the other officers had been charged with malicious felony battery on an inmate. However, he was excluded from the indictment after he was found dead in December from an apparent self-inflicted gunshot wound.
The arrests of the officers stemmed from an Aug. 5 incident, after which Tatum was left severely injured.
Unruly inmates at the NWFRC are usually subdued in their cells with intermittent treatments of pepper spray, according to court documents. Days before the beating, Tatum had been deemed unruly and Kirkland attempted to employ pepper spray treatments. Tatum blocked those efforts and the pepper spray in turn got onto Kirkland, investigators reported.
Kirkland was the officer in charge on the night of the beating. Finch was listed as the assistant officer in charge. Moments before the incident, Kirkland taunted Tatum in his cell to elicit “disruptive behaviors” from Tatum, which worked, according to court documents.
Finch and Kirkland applied two rounds of pepper spray treatment on Tatum within his cell, and Kirkland called in the five-man extradition team to escort Tatum to a decontamination shower, prosecutors allege. As the men equipped themselves for the extradition, Kirkland allegedly told the officers he would state that Tatum spit on him leading up to the beating “to teach him a lesson,” according to court records.
Video from the prison showed Tatum being slammed face first to the concrete floor by Finch and Riley while Tatum’s hands were restrained behind his back and his ankles restrained. The three other officers then jumped on Tatum and pinned him to the ground, according to arrest records.
Following that, Finch and Kirkland allegedly falsified reports from Riley that the incident was caused by Tatum spitting on Kirkland, though each of the subordinate officers would later tell investigators the attack was designed by their supervisor.