Alabama: Kadarius Shermaine Todd, 28, a new guard still on probationary status at the Madison County Jail, was fired on April 4, 2025, after allegedly attempting to smuggle contraband into the lockup. He was apprehended upon arrival to meet a contact with a package containing Suboxone, cigarettes, a cell phone, and tools intended for delivery to a detainee. Todd confessed to detectives and was terminated the same day. The former guard was charged with conspiracy to commit a controlled substance crime and two counts of conspiracy to commit a crime. He was being held at the Madison County Jail on a $16,000 bond. 

Alabama: For his role in a contraband smuggling conspiracy,former Monroe County Jail guard Reginald Montez Thames, 24, received a six-month jail sentence from a federal judge on March 26, 2025, for his conviction for conspiracy and attempting to provide contraband in prison. According to WALA in Mobile, Thames admitted to agreeing to deliver Adderall, cigarettes, a cell phone, and a charger to detainee Vincent Lambert, Jr. for $600 in January 2023. As PLN reported, Thames and a non-incarcerated accomplice, Beverly Castophney, 37, pleaded guilty in December 2024 to conspiring to smuggle contraband into the lockup a year earlier to Lambert, who was Castopheny’s boyfriend. He received a one-year sentence in February 20225. Castophney, who facilitated the deal via monitored text messages and Cash App, was awaiting sentencing in May 2025. [See: PLN, March 2025, p.61.]

Alabama: Two separate incidents in the Alabama Department of Corrections (DOC) prove once again that the state has serious and ongoing issues with smuggling in its prisons. Former Limestone Correctional Facility (CF) guard John Paul Ketteman, 28, pleaded guilty to federal charges of accepting bribes on April 10, 2025. According to Advance Local Media, investigations revealed that Ketteman received over $10,000 via Cash App in under three months in 2022 to smuggle contraband and act as a lookout, even warning an unnamed prisoner of upcoming cell searches. Ketteman, who resigned in November 2022, was among four guards previously indicted on state charges; he faces a maximum of 10 years in federal prison at sentencing on June 24, 2025. In a separate incident, WALA reported that former guard trainee Thomas Middleton, 51, was arrested at Fountain CF on April 4, 2025, after a K-9 alerted guards who then discovered him attempting to smuggle 212 grams of marijuana and two cell phones. Middleton now faces multiple charges, including first-degree marijuana possession and promoting prison contraband for his part in the smuggling scheme.

Alabama: In yet more incidents highlighting guards behaving badly in Alabama, a former DOC guard sergeant was convicted of assault, and a current guard faces charges for an alleged sexual relationship with a prisoner. Advance Local Media reported that on April 8, 2025, a jury found Joe L. Binder, 60, guilty of first-degree assault for a January 2021 baton attack on two prisoners, Ephan Moore and Robert Earl Council, at Donaldson CF. Council, who goes by Kinetic Justice, has been the subject of PLN reporting for his activism while imprisoned. [See: PLN, Jan. 2024, p.12.] Binder was convicted and faces sentencing on June 4, 2025. In an unrelated case, Holman CF guard Sabrina Taylor, 45, was arrested on March 23, 2025, according to WALA. She was charged with multiple offenses, including custodial sexual misconduct and promoting prison contraband. Court documents allege that Taylor engaged in a sexual relationship with an unnamed prisoner between February 24 and March 23, 2025. She is accused of receiving a cell phone from the prisoner while on duty and using it to communicate with him on another contraband phone. Taylor also allegedly provided the prisoner with Bluetooth headphones, iPods, and an unknown powder. 

Arizona: Federal Bureau of Prisons (BOP) contract guard Morris Gary Hibbitt, 51, was sentenced to 13 months in federal prison on April 14, 2025, for sexually assaulting a prisoner under his supervision in May 2023 at Behavioral Systems Southwest (BSS), a residential reentry center contracted by the BOP. KSAZ in Phoenix reported that Hibbitt previously pleaded guilty to sexual abuse on June 17, 2024. In addition to his prison term, he was ordered to serve 10 years of supervised release and must register as a sex offender.

California: Humberto Duran, imprisoned for over 30 years for a 1993 gang-related murder he did not commit, has finally received a declaration of factual innocence, according to KTLA in Los Angeles. Wrongfully convicted at age 18 based on a single eyewitness who later recanted, Duran spent decades behind bars, repeatedly asserting his innocence. The Los Angeles County Superior Court’s April 18, 2025, ruling cited cumulative errors, ineffective assistance of counsel, and new evidence. Duran, released two years ago, said after the declaration of factual innocence: “I wanna [sic] start working in electrical and do my own company and push forward. I want to enjoy life, I think I deserve that.” Duran and his attorneys fought a long battle before his conviction was overturned in October 2024, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.62.]

California: Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department (LASD) Dep. Michael Meiser, 39, was arrested on April 30, 2024, on a federal indictment accusing him of smuggling heroin into the North County Correctional Facility. The charge is especially egregious because Meiser was assigned at the time to the LASD gang investigations unit, Operations Safe Jails, according to the Los Angeles Times. Investigators discovered over a pound of heroin concealed in Pringles cans in his patrol vehicle. Meiser was also found with $25,500 in cash at the time of his arrest and at his residence. Prior state charges alleged that he conspired with reputed gang members Jose Rodriguez and Jackie Triplett to distribute the heroin in the jail.

Canada: According to a report by the National Post on March 21, 2025, former Hells Angels hitman Dean Daniel Kelsie, 51, has been returned to a cell from a halfway house after his roommates there reported being too scared to live with him. Kelsie is 22 years into a life sentence for the 2000 murder in Nova Scotia of Sean Simmons, reportedly for an affair he had with the wife of another member of the motorcycle gang. This is the third day-parole that he’s lost after intimidating fellow parolees, the report said. 

Colorado: BOP prisoner Ishmael Petty, 56, already serving a life sentence for homicide, now faces the death penalty for the 2020 killing of fellow prisoner LaMarcus Hillard, 40, at the ADX “Supermax” lockup in Florence. According to the Department of Justice (DOJ), a federal grand jury returned a two-count indictment on April 10, 2025, charging Petty with first degree murder and murder by a federal prisoner serving a life sentence. Petty was previously convicted of a 2015 assault on prison staff, including librarians and a case manager delivering books to his cell. 

Delaware: WBOC in Salisbury, Maryland, reported that DOC guard Yesenia Martinez-Morales, 27, was arrested on March 16, 2025, on felony charges including official misconduct, promoting prison contraband, and possession with intent to deliver a Tier 1 controlled substance, after investigators accused her of smuggling 5.82 grams of methamphetamine into James T. Vaughn Correctional Center. She was arraigned and released on a $3,500 unsecured bond. 

Florida: Convicted in 2006 for fatally sledgehammering DOC guard Darla Lathrum and fellow prisoner Charles Furston during an escape from Charlotte Correctional Institute, condemned state prisoner Dwight Eaglin, 49, was granted a new penalty phase trial on March 28, 2025. WWSB in Sarasota reported that Eaglin, who was originally imprisoned on a life sentence for murder, received a death sentence for killing Lathrum and Furston in a unanimous jury verdict. Florida transitioned from requiring unanimity to permitting a death sentence with an 8-4 jury vote in 2023—an increased risk of getting another death sentence that Eaglin hopes to overcome by arguing that the change occurred after his crime was committed. The new penalty-phase trial was scheduled to begin on June 9, 2025. 

Florida: David Armstrong Barber, 35, a former Brevard County Jail guard, was indicted on April 8, 2025, for the murder of 72-year-old Jessie Kirk, a wealthy Titusville socialite. According to Florida Today, Barber faces charges including first-degree murder, kidnapping, arson, evidence tampering, and abuse of a dead body. Barber at one time dated Kirk’s niece and was driving Kirk’s car without her permission at the time of the murder.

Georgia: WTVM in Columbus reported that Muscogee County Jail guard Ryan Khalil Jones was arrested on April 1, 2025, following a months-long investigation into contraband smuggling allegations against him. Jones faces seven felony charges, including two counts each of giving prohibited items to inmates and crossing the guard line, along with charges of violating his oath of office and possession with intent to distribute methamphetamine and cocaine. 

Indiana: According to The Republic in Columbus, Jennings County Jail guard Harlan Penycuff, 26, was arrested and fired after an apparent off-duty road rage incident on April 4, 2025. Multiple 911 calls reported that Penycuff was obstructing a vehicle in Butlerville. He claimed that the unnamed driver had been involved in an accident with an ATV he was driving, but responding deputies found no evidence of that. Instead, they determined that Penycuff had climbed onto the car’s hood and discharged a firearm multiple times into the ground. Penycuff was charged with felony criminal confinement and misdemeanor counts of pointing a firearm and criminal recklessness with a deadly weapon.

Minnesota: According to KSTP in St. Paul, state DOC guard Kristi Lettie Tyler, 35, was charged on March 31, 2025, with smuggling a cellphone and cocaine to an unnamed prisoner at the Minnesota Correctional Facility in Rush City. An investigation began in September 2024 after a prisoner was overheard arranging a drop-off. Monitored calls then reportedly linked Tyler to the scheme, revealing her intent to smuggle four plastic baggies that were later found inside a rubber glove in her backpack. Confronted by investigators on September 27, 2024, Tyler admitted to delivering a phone and a “white powdery substance,” later identified as eight grams of cocaine. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison. 

Mississippi: DeSoto County Jail prisoner John Riles, 52, was sentenced to five more years on March 3, 2025, according to WLBT in Jackson. Riles was serving 90 days for a probation violation on a forgery conviction when he attacked an unnamed guard in November 2024. Video of the incident showed Riles and the guard arguing before the guard took Riles to the ground. As other guards approached to assist, the scrappy prisoner then grabbed a dropped TASER to attack one of them, resulting in minor injuries. 

New Hampshire: After pleading guilty to sexually assaulting a detainee, former Rockingham County Jail guard Diangelo Cruz Rivera, 22, was sentenced to 90 days in jail on April 4, 2025. WMUR in Manchester reported that the remaining portion of his 12-month sentence was suspended under a plea agreement. Prosecutors stated that Cruz Rivera coerced detainees into performing sexual acts in front of him. During the sentencing hearing, one victim condemned the plea deal as insufficient: “When you over power (sic) us with your badge, this plea deal is another slap in the face because you’re getting away from taking your own accountability.” As part of the sentencing, Rivera must register as a sex offender and is barred from future employment as a guard or police officer. 

New York: The New York Post reported that retired New York City DOC guard Bruce Boyd, 54, was fatally shot on April 4, 2025, by Suffolk County police who responded to a request for a welfare check at his Brentwood home and found him armed with a knife and suffering from self-inflicted wounds. They opened fire after he allegedly refused to drop the weapon and charged at them. Bruce worked for 24 years at various lockups in the City’s Rikers Island Jail complex, serving as a guard instructor and on the elite Emergency Service Unit. 

New York: Another former Rikers Island jailer, Ghislaine Barrientos, 37, was sentenced on April 16, 2025, to six months in prison followed by six months of home detention for accepting bribes to smuggle contraband into the Robert N. Davoren Complex. The U.S. Attorney’s Office (USAO) for the Southern District of New York said that Barrientos admitted to conspiring to bring cocaine, synthetic cannabinoids (K2), and food to detainees in exchange for over $10,000 in illegal payoffs. In addition to her prison sentence, Barrientos was ordered to forfeit $11,866 in bribe money that she received. 

New York: Oswego County Jail guard Christopher D. Weber, 37, was arrested on felony child pornography charges by fellow County Sheriff’s deputies on March 26, 2025, Oswego County News Now reported. Investigators discovered hundreds of kiddie porn videos and photos on his smartphone, and they said that Weber accessed the material—including videos of adults sexually abusing young children—while on duty at the county jail, where he had worked since 2023. He is currently held in the Madison County jail. Prosecutors have offered a plea deal with 10 years imprisonment and 20 years of post-release supervision.

North Carolina: Former Pender Correctional Institution guard Sgt. Richard Wargo, 37, pleaded guilty to perjury after lying to a federal grand jury regarding an excessive force incident against a prisoner. According to the USAO for the Eastern District of North Carolina, federal Judge Terrence W. Boyle accepted the plea on March 27, 2025. The FBI began investigating Pender in 2022 following multiple allegations of abuse—including a November 17, 2021, incident in which an unnamed and handcuffed prisoner was taken to an unmonitored area and beaten with a baton. Wargo falsely claimed that he was not present, but fellow guards ratted him out, revealing that Wargo was not only present but also took part in the assault, striking the prisoner. He now faces up to 60 months in federal prison..

North Carolina: ABC News reported that Shana Cloud, a former traveling nurse for the Virginia DOC, appeared in court on March 31, 2025, to face charges of murdering her husband, retired Green Beret Clinton Bonnell, 50, and concealing his remains. Those were discovered in a Cumberland County pond after he was reported missing in January 2025. In court, gruesome details emerged about the alleged murder, which the district attorney called “horrific.” He described the condition of Bonnell’s corpse as “… just a torso. It did not have legs or arms or a head when it was found.” Bonnell had reportedly informed Cloud that he intended to seek a divorce the day before his disappearance. She remains in custody without bond.

North Carolina: A BOP guard lieutenant at the Federal Correctional Institute Medium II in Butner received two years of probation on April 11, 2025, for conspiring to violate the civil rights of a prisoner.  According to the USAO for the Eastern District of North Carolina, Lt. Daniel Mitchell, 42, ordered another guard to “teach K.G. a lesson” after the prisoner allegedly exposed himself to a fellow guard and masturbated in front of her. Mitchell directed guard R.J. to move prisoner K.G., whom he called a “jerk,” to a holding cell for “counseling” and assault him, warning him to avoid the prisoner’s face. R.J. then struck K.G. multiple times, knocking him down and kicking him until other guards intervened.

Ohio: Rashawn Cannon, 27, a prisoner at Ross Correctional Institution, was indicted on March 25, 2025, on three counts of aggravated murder for the Christmas Day beating death of guard Andrew Lansing, 62. The Columbus Dispatch reported that Ross County prosecutors could seek the death penalty, citing the killing of a law enforcement officer as an aggravating circumstance under Ohio law. Lansing was found severely beaten in a guard’s shack and died from blunt force head injuries, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Feb. 2025, p.56.] Prior to his death, Lansing had disciplined Cannon for rule violations, including making threats, as well as possessing homemade alcohol and K2. After the killing, Cannon was transferred to Southern Ohio Correctional Facility. 

Ohio: Licking County Sheriff’s Cpt. Wes Wagner resigned on February 25, 2025, following an internal investigation that showed he failed to disclose an inappropriate relationship between a former guard and a detainee at the county jail. WSYX in Columbus reported that Wagner, a 20-year veteran, was aware of the relationship between guard Jacquline Theimer and the unnamed detainee, having reviewed numerous romantic messages between the two before Theimer’s resignation on November 29, 2024. But he did not report his knowledge to superiors. When questioned, Wagner falsely claimed ignorance about Theimer’s departure and initially downplayed his review of the messages. When he recanted, Wagner claimed he was trying to help the single mom. Theimer has not been criminally charged.

Ohio: The Repository in Cantonreported that former Stark County Jail guard Jason W. Rohr, 50, pleaded guilty on January 14, 2025, to a felony charge of tampering with records, after falsifying jail logs when detainee David McKain committed suicide on November 29, 2023. Before Rohr discovered the detainee hanging in his cell, he claimed to have checked on him every 15 minutes, as required, even reporting that he watched McKain walk around his cell. He also said that he offered to open it for “time out,” which he said McKain declined. In reality, McKain was dying or dead, and the inattentive guard simply fudged the logs. Rohr resigned from his job on March 13, 2024. After his plea, Judge Taryn L. Heath demonstrated remarkable forgiveness for the guard’s deceit, withholding conviction for him to undergo mental health or substance abuse treatment; if completed, the charge will be dismissed.

Ohio: Two Cuyahoga County Jail guards were placed on administrative leave on February 28, 2025, for allegedly staging a detainee “fight club” at the lockup. According to WEWS in Cleveland, surveillance video from February 24, 2025, showed detainees lining up, doing calisthenics and then exchanging blows with one another—while guards Naina Tomlinson and Elizabeth Reaves were present and apparently supervising. Both were placed on leave and an internal investigation into the incident was underway. 

Ohio: Another Cuyahoga County Jail guard, Quiana Thompson, 31, was arrested on April 7, 2025, and charged with drug trafficking and illegal conveyance of narcotics into the jail, according to WOIO Cleveland. Sheriff’s detectives reportedly recorded jail calls indicating that Thompson used Apple Pay to receive payment for smuggling drugs. Investigators then tracked Thompson as she picked up an envelope of methamphetamine from Tanisha Jones, 43, a non-incarcerated co-conspirator who was also arrested. Both were jailed, Thompson on a $250,000 bond, and Jones’s bond was $500,000. A guard since March 2022, Thompson was placed on paid administrative leave. 

Pennsylvania: Somerset County jurors determined on April 10, 2025, that aggravating circumstances outweighed mitigating factors in the 2018 murder of state DOC guard Sgt. Mark Baserman at the State Correctional Institution (SCI) in Somerset, and they then returned a death sentence for prisoner Paul Kendrick. The Daily American reported that he was serving a life sentence for a prior murder when he fatally beat Baserman over a towel that Kendrick insisted on hanging in his cell for privacy and that Baserman removed and confiscated. During sentencing deliberations, the prosecution argued that Kendrick acted with a “deadly mission,” emphasizing his prior murder conviction. The defense presented mitigating factors, including Kendrick’s dysfunctional childhood, his age at the time of both murders, educational struggles, his relationship with his sons, and his courtroom behavior. Ultimately, the jury concluded that these factors did not outweigh the severity of the aggravating circumstances in Baserman’s death.

Pennsylvania: Misconduct as two other DOC lockups was blamed on guards. According to the Observer-Reporter, SCI-Fayette guard Richard Cacurak, 25, was charged on April 2, 2025, with assault, obstruction, and filing false reports for allegedly attacking prisoner Vuyani Gxuluwe on Christmas Eve 2024. Cacurak claimed that Gxuluwe spat on him and resisted handcuffing, but surveillance video reportedly refuted that, instead showing Cacurak pursuing and forcibly pushing Gxuluwe into a cell before punching him repeatedly. In a separate incident at SCI-Dallas, guard Thomas Michael Wren, 37, was arrested on April 4, 2025, for attempting to smuggle synthetic marijuana and Suboxone into the lockup. TheWilkes-Barre Citizens’ Voice reported that tipped-off undercover investigators arrested Wren after he accepted “replica contraband” and $1,500 in fake cash. Wren was handed felony charges including possessing contraband and drug trafficking. 

Pennsylvania: A former Blair County Prison guard, Caleb John McGeary, received a state prison sentence of two to six years on April 8, 2025, for his role in an operation to smuggle Suboxone into the lockup in early 2023. McGeary, 34, was immediately taken into custody following the sentencing hearing, according to the Altoona Mirror. An investigation revealed that McGeary accepted a bribe to facilitate delivery of Suboxone from an unnamed outside co-conspirator to prisoner Brendan Poggi. McGeary will be eligible for early release under DOC’s Recidivism Risk Reduction Incentive, which could cut his sentence to as little as 18 months.

Texas: The Houston Chronicle reported on March 18, 2025, that a mentally ill Harris County Jail detainee had been released from the lockup after an 18-year wait for a trial that never occurred. Edric Wilson was 29 in 2006 when DNA testing identified him as the killer who fatally bludgeoned Johnnie Daniel, 84, the great-aunt of famed Houston mega-church pastor Joel Osteen. Found incompetent to stand trial, Wilson cycled between the jail and state psychiatric hospitals until a 2023 retest of the DNA using more modern technology found it significantly less likely that he was Daniel’s killer. Wilson pleaded guilty to an unrelated assault charge—the one that had put him in the jail when the bogus DNA match was made—and he was released in August 2024. Another 229 detainees held at the jail have been there over 1,000 days.

Texas: William Waybourn, the adopted son of Tarrant County Sheriff Bill E. Waybourn, was arrested March 3, 2025, on charges including soliciting sex from an underage girl and assaulting a police officer during his arrest. KTVT in Fort Worth reported that the 20-year-old was booked into the Arlington City Jail before posting bond the following morning. According to police, officers responded to a call about a man making explicit comments and following a juvenile. Waybourn then allegedly resisted arrest and injured an officer. The Sheriff’s Office released a statement saying Sheriff Waybourn is “disappointed in the choices his son made” but maintains that he has taught his children about “consequences to those actions.” The case is being prosecuted by the Tarrant County District Attorney’s Office. The sheriff cited his son’s developmental challenges stemming from being born with fetal alcohol syndrome but stressed that the family would get over this crisis and “come out on the other side.” 

Texas: According to KBMT in Beaumont, state Department of Criminal Justice guard Amber Nicole Staten, 38, was arrested on April 14, 2025, after allegedly attempting to smuggle a cell phone into the LeBlanc Unit. After the phone was discovered hidden under a table on April 2, 2025, investigators traced its purchase to a local Walmart, from which they used surveillance video footage to identify Staten buying the device in December 2024. Staten was charged with felony possession of a prohibited item in a correctional facility, a third-degree felony. She was being held at the Jefferson County Correctional Facility on a $10,000 bond. If convicted, she faces up to 10 years in prison. 

Virginia: WTVR in Richmond reported that a former guard at Bon Air Juvenile Correctional Center, Cedric Thomas, 60, was arrested and charged with sexually assaulting a teenage detainee in May 2024. A grand jury indicted Thomas on March 17, 2025, on charges that included three counts of indecent liberties with a child by a custodian and one count of object sexual penetration. Court records show that Thomas retired from the state Division of Juvenile Justice after being placed on pre-disciplinary leave but before the internal investigation concluded. He was being held without bond. Investigators say there may be more victims and have asked the public to come forward with any information. The lockup suffers from critically low staffing, overworked and unsatisfied employees, and troubling conditions of confinement. 

Wisconsin: State prisoner Taylor Schabusiness, who is serving a life sentence for murdering her boyfriend while they engaged in sex and then dismembering him, caused a disruption at a preliminary hearing on April 4, 2025, where she was arraigned on fresh charges for allegedly attacking a Taycheedah Correctional Institution nurse and guard with a tray and metal table while having a staple removed from her arm. Moments after the hearing began, Court TV Media reported, Schabusiness lunged from her seat toward her attorney, was immediately tackled by guards and removed from the courtroom. The hearing resumed with Schabusiness participating via Zoom. She pleaded not guilty, but Judge Anthony Nehls found probable cause to send the case to trial. Later in May 2025, Schabusiness missed a key filing date in her appeal; her defense attorney at that time, Gregory Petit, asked to be removed from her case. 

Wisconsin: A state prisoner serving time for child sexual assault received a new sentence on April 8, 2025, for attempting to hire unnamed fellow prisoners at Stanley Correctional Institution to kill the prosecutor in his case. According to WEAU in Eau Claire, Jay Conklin, 52, pleaded no contest to solicitation of first-degree intentional homicide. He was serving a 40-year sentence for convictions in two child sexual assault cases. His new sentence added an additional seven years and six months to that term, followed by five years of extended supervision. The new sentence will begin after he completes his current term.  

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