Shrewd Federal Prisoner Salvages $5,000 from Suit Against Arkansas Jail Where He Was Held Pre-Trial
by Anthony W. Accurso
Randall Morris was held in Arkansas’ Miller County Detention Center (MCDC) from January 20, 2020, until he was transferred to Saline County Detention Center (SCDC) on March 24, 2021. During this time, the 55-year-old disabled veteran allegedly suffered 17 violations of his constitutional rights, including: a lack of medical care for his paraplegia, diabetes, hypertension and misophonia, a disorder which involves increased reactivity or stress in response to certain sounds; exposure to unsanitary conditions; disregard for reasonable protective measures during the COVID-19 pandemic; denial of access to his mail; and retaliation for filing grievances about these matters.
His complaint was filed pro se in federal court for the Western District of Arkansas in November 2020. Most of his allegations were dismissed in August 2022, due to his inability to show anything more than de minimis harm. However, a few survived summary judgment, including his allegation that MCDC denied his newspapers and correspondence from the Veterans Administration; that an MCDC official seized his legal papers in retaliation for exercising his legal rights; and that he was housed with another prisoner who had mental health issues and was loud, which aggravated Morris’ misophonia.
By that time, Morris was held by the federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) at the Federal Correctional Institution (FCI) in Seagoville, Texas. Trial was scheduled for September 2024. But Morris discovered that he could not appear by video link. Furthermore, he had no right to free transport for a civil trial. The only way to get there was to arrange transport by United States Marshals at his own expense, which he was told would cost about $7,500.
As Morris told PLN, all Defendants had to do at that point was “wait[] for the hearing in which I would have had to reveal that I cannot pay the U.S. Marshals $7.5k for my transport to the trial and that would have been the end of that.” Instead, he offered to let them settle his case for $5,000, and they accepted, finalizing the agreement on July 22, 2024. See Morris v. King, USDC (W.D. Ark.), Case No. 4:20-cv-04101.
Morris said that after onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, guards wouldn’t take detainees’ temperatures, preferring to just make up a reading and falsify their log entries accordingly. So when he heard that a guard captain shot a detainee with pepper balls, saying that was the only way to make him submit to a temperature check, Morris smelled a rat. During discovery for this case, he requested video of the incident and hoped to prove his claim about inadequate pandemic response at the jail.
However, he was sent another video that showed the same captain beating the same detainee while he was handcuffed (Morris thinks this was a mistake). When Morris finally tracked down the twice-assaulted detainee, Tyrone Harris, he became the main witness in a suit that Harris then filed. The captain, whose name was not discovered by Morris, was fired. But Harris dismissed his suit without prejudice on June 6, 2024—about the same time that jailers agreed to pay Morris $5,000 to drop his claim. See: Harris v. Easley, 2024 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 101141 (W.D. Ark.). It is a strange coincidence, one without a ready explanation, but PLN will update any developments that become available.
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