A six-member federal jury has found five former Marion Correctional Treatment Center officers not liable in the February 2022 death of an intellectually disabled inmate.
The suit against the five corrections officers was filed in 2023 by Kymberly Hobbs, the sister of 52-year-old Charles James Givens, who Hobbs says died after he was beaten by the officers. The lawsuit sought $15 million in damages.
Hobbs’ attorneys, Mark Krudys and Paul Stanley, argued that the beating took place in an off-camera shower room after Givens had defecated on himself. Givens, who suffered a traumatic brain injury as a young child and had the limited intellectual ability of a four- to eight- year-old, also suffered from Chron’s Disease, which frequently caused the inmate to empty his bowels on himself.
Ronald West, a former MCTC inmate who served as a “cadre” at the prison at the time of Givens’ death, told jurors that he had been cleaning the wing Givens was housed on when he noticed he had defecated on himself and alerted the officers.
REM video shows the five men — corrections officers Samuel Osborne and William Montgomery, treatment officers Joshua Jackson and Gregory Plummer and MCTC Sgt. Anthony Kelly — escort Givens to the shower room three cells away. REM footage is essentially a sequence of still images taken every second and compiled into video form.
West, who had been tasked with cleaning Givens’ cell, said he was in and out of the shower room and surrounding area multiple times as he collected cleaning supplies and deposited soiled linens.
The encounter, he said, started out with Kelly yelling at the inmate, “Get your ass in the shower, Givens.” He said he then saw Kelly “jab” Givens in the right side of his back. After he left the shower room, West said he heard what sounded like “body shots.”
During one of his trips between Givens’ cell and the shower room, West said he also heard what sounded like a towel snapping and Plummer say, “nut shot.” Inside, he said Plummer held a towel in a way that suggested he had been twirling it.
West said he heard more of the ordeal than he saw, but said he knew something was happening inside the shower room because he heard Givens say, ”Ow,” and “Stop.”
On another trip to the shower room, West claims to have seen Jackson standing on a chair outside Givens’ shower stall, dumping a bucket of cold water onto the inmate while Montgomery threw cold water into his face. West said he knew the water was cold because he saw the officers fill the buckets in the mop room next door.
Osborne, West said, didn’t participate in the abuse.
“Osborne really didn’t do nothing,” he said. “He just stood there."
About two hours after Givens returned to his cell, Osborne found the inmate unresponsive while carrying out his regular rounds of the wing.
An autopsy revealed that Givens suffered a laceration to his spleen caused by two of four broken posterior (back) ribs. Then Assistant Medical Examiner Eli Goodman said he had been disturbed to find 2.5 quarts of blood sitting inside Givens’ abdomen. Givens, he said, had additional anterior (front) rib fractures and bruising to his lower intestine, as well as several bruises and abrasions on various parts of his body.
Defense attorneys Tim McAfee, Cameron Bell and Jeremy O’Quinn argued, though, that Givens had had a seizure and fell onto the edge of his bed frame, breaking his back ribs and rupturing his spleen. They contended that the front rib fractures were the result of another MCTC sergeant performing a sternal rub when the inmate was found unresponsive.
Testifying on behalf of the defense, Mark Sochor said the alignment of the posterior rib fractures led him to believe Givens had had a seizure and fell backward in “tree trunk” fashion onto the edge of the bed. Sochor is an associate professor of emergency medicine and biomechanics at the University of Virginia. He also serves as an assistant medical examiner and reviewed Givens’ autopsy and other relevant records.
Sochor noted that Givens’ ribs fractures were linear, suggesting a straight edge had caused the injury. A punch, he said, would not cause that.
“It would be very, very difficult to punch all the way down and break four ribs in a row,” he said.
He noted that Givens stood at about 6’3”.
“Falling from that height could break those ribs,” he said.
Asked about the likelihood of a sternal rub fracturing anterior ribs, Sochor said, “I don’t think my sternal rubs would do that, but I don’t know how vigorously they were doing it.”
Sochor also said records showed that “scant” or “minimal” bleeding occurred at the site of that injury, suggesting the heart had stopped beating by that point.
Sochor also believed the bruising to Givens’ intestine was a manifestation of his Chron’s disease.
Specializing in injuries sustained from vehicle crashes and frequently serving as an expert witness for auto companies, Sochor also noted that bruising to the intestines is not even typically seen in vehicle crashes. A punch, he said, would undoubtedly come with much less force.
He didn’t believe the inmate’s injuries occurred prior to his return to his cell, saying those injuries would be painful. Givens, he said, appeared to walk freely on footage showing him walking back to his cell.
With those injuries, Sochor said, “You’re not going to want to move.”
Hobbs’ expert witnesses, however, had a differing assessment.
William Oliver, a forensic pathologist who has worked a number of high-profile cases for the U.S. Military, testified that such a scenario was highly unlikely. Oliver, who specializes in imagery, also examined the autopsy report, photographs and other relevant medical documents.
While it could not be said with certainty that any single one of Givens’ injuries was the result of abuse, Oliver contended, “It’s almost impossible to believe [the totality of the injuries] altogether were due to anything other than abuse.”
He pointed out that falls resulting in rib fractures are uncommon in general. Even looking at the subset of elderly women with osteoporosis—those who are at a much higher risk of bone fracture—Oliver said only about 5% of falls result in fractures.
He also questioned the idea that Givens had suffered a seizure, noting that only one seizure had been documented in the inmate’s medical records, about a year prior to his death. On that occasion, Givens had been hospitalized with hypothermia. Oliver noted that his body temperature was at 94 degrees and his oxygen levels at 81 when the seizure occurred. That instance, he said, “could have been the result of being on death’s door.”
That one seizure, Oliver said, did not suggest Givens had a seizure disorder.
Oliver also dismissed the idea that a sternal rub could cause rib fractures.
“It didn’t happen,” he said.
He noted that he’d been a forensic pathologist for more than 40 years and “I’ve never seen it.”
He’d also never seen a single documented case of that happening, he said.
“If you look at the literature, there’s no support of that,” he said.
Oliver said the injuries at the time of Givens’ death, his history of injury and hospitalization, and the presence of multiple bruises and abrasions in various stages of healing were indicative of long-term abuse.
He said inmates with mental limitations are statistically more likely to suffer abuse by both fellow inmates and corrections officers.
While jurors briefly heard other instances of injury and hypothermia listed, they were precluded from hearing more details. Determining that the defendants were not accused in those instances, Judge James Jones nixed any further discussion on those instances.
Also precluded at trial was talk of Givens’ murder conviction, a subject Defense Attorney Tim McAfee narrowly avoided in his cross examination of Hobbs. Jones had determined that knowledge of the crime would prejudice the jury.
Krudys and Stanley objected when McAfee asked Hobbs if she had described the crime for which her brother had been convicted as “horrible.” Givens had been convicted of the 2012 murder of his mother’s home health nurse. Hobbs also acknowledged during cross examination that her brother would spend the rest of his life in prison.
Pointing to Hobbs’ earlier testimony of having a close relationship with her brother, McAfee said he intended to question her about how that relationship had changed after his conviction. He pointed a previous statement Hobbs made in which she said she would no longer allow Givens to be around her or her children.
“I think the change in her behavior without talking about what he’s convicted of. . . is relevant,” McAfee said to Jones as jurors waited in the jury room.
Stanley argued, though, that attorneys for the plaintiff had met their obligation by not mentioning a polygraph examination West had undergone and reportedly passed. Mention of the exam had also been precluded.
Stanley contended that McAfee was trying to entice jurors to privately search for information on Givens’ conviction after being expressly forbidden from doing so. McAfee, Stanley said, had mentioned Lee County, the place in which the murder had occurred, twice in his questioning.
“It’s clear that he has intended to inject that,” Stanley insisted.
Krudys also argued that the defense was “sprinkling in and suggesting a sexual abuse,” which he said jurors would not be able to get beyond, a notion Judge Jones seemed to agree with.
Deciding that the risk of potential prejudice outweighed the benefits of further examination, Jones ordered McAfee to not follow that line of questioning.
In her testimony, Hobbs said MCTC officials had led her to believe her brother had died of natural causes. A recent hospitalization due to Covid infection supported that initial belief, she said.
It wasn’t until she later got a phone call from another prisoner’s girlfriend that she began to question her brother’s death.
“She went into detail about what happened to my brother,” Hobbs said.
The woman had gotten the information from her boyfriend, who shared a cell with West.
“I honestly was flabbergasted. I didn’t know if what this person was saying was true . . . because my understanding was he died of natural causes due to complications of pneumonia or covid.”
She began making phone calls to the medical examiner’s office, the funeral home and the prison.
A few days after that phone call, Hobbs said she got a copy of her brother’s death certificate. It listed his cause of death as blunt force trauma.
“I knew it was true what this person had told me. . . I fell to pieces because I knew this lady was telling the truth.”
The woman, she said, had known things that had not yet been determined by the medical examiner by the time they spoke.
Defense attorneys, however, argued that West’s story had been completely fabricated, pointing out that it varied each time he told it.
“The plaintiff’s entire case is based on the word of someone who’s told repeated and provable false stories,” said O’Quinn, who represented Osborne.
Saying that Hobbs’ attorneys would “tell you whatever they can to win the case,” O’Quinn said West’s statement was “completely unbelievable.”
O’Quinn also criticized Goodman, the medical examiner, who he claimed was in the plaintiff’s pocket. He told jurors they should wonder why Goodman didn’t change Givens’ manner of death to homicide.
Krudys contended Goodman had left the medical examiner’s office by the time he learned of the allegations and was unable to do so, but O’Quinn argued, “You can’t rely on anything he says because he’s bought and paid for.”
Echoing O’Quinn, Bell told jurors, “This case is easy. West made this whole thing up.”
“I told you in opening arguments we would prove what happened and we did,” Bell said.
Givens death, Bell said, was an unfortunate medical emergency and his clients were “in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
McAfee reminded jurors of the first question he asked West on the stand. He had asked West if he knew what the word “acuity” meant.
West had said he did not.
McAfee said he started off with that question because, “Ronald West is a pathological liar and I wanted to expose him for the liar he is.”
McAfee said the word was included in a statement signed by West. How could that statement be his words if he didn’t know what the word meant, McAfee asked.
Krudys and Stanley contended though, that attorneys often cleaned up clients’ statements.
“Big deal if the word ‘acuity’ was inserted,” Krudys said.
But, McAfee argued, “We knew from the very first sentence out of his mouth he was a liar.”
He urged jurors, reminding them of their instructions, “If you believe he lied, you don’t have to believe anything he said. And what does that mean for this case? It means the plaintiff’s case fouls right off the bat.”
Krudys, however, contended that West had been consistent in his statements, asking jurors to think back on the hours-long cross-examination West sat through.
“What can you recall that Mr. West lied about,” he asked.
Proving a point during their own questioning of the defendants, Krudys had previously asked some of the defendants to identify where they were at specific times on the video. When they were unable to do so, Krudys asked why West should be held to a different standard.
The defense, Krudys insisted, had been playing a game of “Gotcha.”
Krudys and Stanley posited that the defendants were upset that Givens had defecated on himself. At least two of the defendants acknowledged that the inmate had put his hands down his soiled pants.
The attorneys noted that with Givens’ mental status, no demerit they could give him would stick and that the officers had no disciplinary avenue to take.
In his testimony, Jackson said Givens had reached into his pants, but made no effort to throw feces.
Krudys said he did not believe the men meant to kill Givens, that they only wanted to make a point, but that it went over the line.
He said there was no evidence that Givens had even attempted to stand once inside his cell. If Givens had fallen onto the bedframe as suggested by the defense, he argued, the thin mattress pad would have gone to the ground with him.
He also doubted Givens would have gotten himself up and back onto the bed.
“He’d have stayed on the ground,” he said.
“He’s found in the same exact area he was left in,” Krudys asserted.
Ultimately, jurors found the defendants' version of events more likely, finding all five men not liable in Givens’ death.
The verdict appears to bring to an end three years of scrutiny the investigation and legal proceedings have brought to MCTC and the five officers.
Following the verdict, Virginia Department of Corrections Director Chad Dotson praised the finding.
“Unfortunately, reporters, advocates, and those in the court of public opinion often attempt to undermine our agency's reputation and the important work of our corrections team members,” Dotson said. “This is patently unfair to our more than 11,000 corrections team members who are dedicated to ensuring public safety across Virginia. As we saw in a court of law, however, justice prevailed on Thursday."
“Thursday’s verdict confirms what the VADOC has long known: Our best-in-class agency is committed to its mission of ensuring public safety by providing effective incarceration, supervision, and evidence-based re-entry services.”
