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Four Indicted in Videotaped Brazoria Jail Beatings

Loaded on Oct. 15, 1998 published in Prison Legal News October, 1998, page 19

Filed under: Out of State Transfers, Private Prisons, Capital Correctional Resources Inc, Criminal Prosecution, Guard Brutality/Beatings. Locations: Missouri, Texas.

FBI agents arrested three current and former Brazoria County jailers indicted July 29, 1998, on charges stemming from the infamous videotaped shakedown of Missouri prisoners in the Brazoria County "Rent-A-Jail." The three, Lester Arnold, David Cisneros and Robert Percival, along with former Capital Correctional Resources Inc. (CCRI) guard Wilton Wallace, are charged with one count of aiding and abetting the assault of Missouri prisoner Toby Hawthorne.

Hawthorne was kicked, shocked with a stun gun and bitten by a police dog. The abuse was graphically portrayed in a 30-minute CCRI "training video" recorded September 18, 1996. The tape later surfaced (as a result of discovery conducted in litigation initiated pro se by a Missouri prisoner) and was nationally televised in August, 1997. [ PLN , Nov. 1997]

Wallace was previously arrested June 8, 1998, and charged with another attack not caught on tape. In that indictment, Wallace is accused of slamming jail prisoner Clarence Fisher's face into a wall on November 7, 1996.

Wallace had been hired by CCRI despite a criminal record for beating prisoners while employed by the Texas prison system. [See: U.S. v. Wallace , 673 F.Supp 205 (S.D. Tex. 1987)]

On August 4, 1998, Wallace and two ex-deputies, Lester Arnold and David Cisneros, invoked their Fifth Amendment right against self-incrimination during deposition testimony in a civil rights lawsuit brought by 30 Missouri prisoners who were brutalized during the videotaped "guard riot." PLN will report the outcomes of both the civil and criminal cases after their conclusion.

Dallas Morning News, Tyler Morning News