Rural Virginia Jury Refuses to Hold Guards Liable for State Prisoner’s Death
On April 10, 2025, a jury in tiny Abingdon, Virginia (pop. 8,295) refused to assign liability to a half-dozen state Department of Corrections (DOC) employees accused in the death of mentally ill prisoner Charles Givens, 52, at Marion Correctional Treatment Center.
As PLN reported, five guards and the former warden were sued by Givens’ surviving sister, Kimberly Hobbs, for a February 2022 beat-down that left him with a broken rib, which then fatally punctured his spleen. The guards insisted that the rib was broken when Givens, who had the mental capacity of a child, fell from his bunk. A grand jury in the same federal court for the Western District of Virginia declined to indict them in October 2023. [See: PLN, Sep. 2024, p.19.]
Jurors at trial in Hobbs’ case heard eyewitness testimony to the beating from another former prisoner, Ron West. He was captured on surveillance video as he cleaned up Givens’ cell and followed to the shower where he said that guards assaulted the prisoner. But jurors apparently discredited his account.
“I’m sorry that her brother passed away, you know, but we had nothing to do with it,” insisted one of the accused guards, William Zachary Montgomery. “We showed up to work that day, and that was the day he passed away and we had nothing to do with it.”
“They have lied,” shot back Hobbs’ Richmond attorney, Mark Krudys.
Hobbs said no appeal was planned. “[Y]ou have five officers and one inmate and a small town,” she shrugged, so “I don’t think the outcome would honestly really be any different, unless it was just completely out of that whole area.”
However, she took some comfort from small concessions that DOC made after her suit was filed, like installing cameras in the shower area at the prison. See: Hobbs v. Kelly, USDC (W.D. Va.), Case No. 1:23-cv00003.
Additional source: NPR News
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Related legal case
Hobbs v. Kelly
| Year | 2025 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (W.D. Va.), Case No. 1:23-cv-00003 |
| Level | District Court |
| Conclusion | Jury Verdict |