$667,000 Awarded to Muslim Missouri Prisoners Pepper-Sprayed for Praying
by Chuck Sharman
On March 9, 2026, a jury in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Missouri awarded a total of $667,000 to a group of Muslim state prisoners pepper-sprayed by Department of Corrections (DOC) guards while engaged in religious prayer at the Eastern Reception, Diagnostic and Correctional Center (ERDCC) in Bonne Terre.
As PLN reported, the prisoners—Reginald Clemons, Steven Stafford, Wendell Harris, Montrell Moore, Pre’Marcus Howard, Mark Holliman, Vincent Hood, Mandell Kent and Michael Smith—were gathered for one of five daily prayers in their “honor dorm” at ERDCC in February 2021. COVID-19 restrictions had closed the prison chapel, and the prayer sessions had been ongoing for months. But guard Lt. Michelle Basham that day ordered them to stop, insisting there was “no praying outside the chapel.”
Stafford, who led the group, tried to speed through the rest of the prayers, since an aborted prayer violates Muslim strictures. Smith and Kent then left. Meanwhile, Basham called for backup, using the code for a prisoner assault. When other guards arrived on the scene, Holliman, who is white, was also removed from the group. The guards then surrounded the remaining prisoners, all of them Black, and emptied canisters of pepper spray directly into their noses and mouths.
One guard, Carl Hart, had earlier been relieved of food delivery duty during Ramadan “after telling some of the prisoners that he had PTSD from having been ‘trained to kill Muslims in Afghanistan,’ [and] objecting that he now ‘ha[d] to feed these motherfuckers,’” the complaint recalled. Nevertheless, he was allowed to be in the group that responded with such heavy force to Basham’s call. He and the other guards then marched the prisoners in their socks across a cold, muddy field to isolation in solitary confinement cells without heat or running water. For the next 15 hours, they were also denied medical attention, forced to use dirty toilets to clean off the pepper spray. The guards cited them for instigating a riot, a charge that gang task force officials later admitted was unwarranted; however, the prisoners were still cited for disobeying Basham’s order to stop praying, costing them their honor dorm placements.
Legal Saga Begins
The prisoners filed suit pro se under 42 U.S.C. § 1983, alleging violations of their civil rights, along with state-law claims. In December 2023, the district court dismissed individual capacity claims against DOC director Anne Precythe and other Defendants, without prejudice to Plaintiffs’ ability to refile the claims against them in their official capacities; otherwise, Defendants’ motion to dismiss was denied. [See: PLN, July 2024, p.57.]
After picking up counsel from attorneys with the Council on American Islamic Relations (CAIR), the prisoners filed an amended complaint in October 2024, accusing Precythe and other DOC officials in their official capacities. The parties consented to review by a Magistrate, who dismissed Smith’s claims on February 23, 2026, finding he failed to exhaust his administrative remedies as required by the Prison Litigation Reform Act, 42 U.S.C. § 1997e. Claims by Holliman and Moore against certain guards that the district court had previously dismissed were refiled with the amended complaint and again dismissed. See: Clemons v. Basham, 2026 U.S. Dist. LEXIS 36287 (E.D. Mo.).
The case then proceeded to a six-day trial. At the conclusion of the fifth day on March 6, 2026, Defendants moved for judgment as a matter of law, but the Magistrate largely denied them. When deliberations ended, jurors found for Plaintiffs on their First Amendment religious free-exercise claim; on their Eighth Amendment claims under § 1983 for excessive force with the pepper spray and deliberate indifference to their resulting medical need; and on their Fourteenth Amendment claim for violation of their right to equal protection under the law with the religious discrimination that they suffered. The jury also found for Clemons on his state-law battery claim against Hart.
Clemons and Howard were each awarded $75,000 in damages; Stafford was awarded $185,000; Moore was awarded $95,000; Harris was awarded $85,000; Hood was awarded $68,500; Holliman was awarded $65,000; and Kent was awarded $28,500. Plaintiffs also moved to extend their time to file for attorney’s fees and costs, and Defendants did not oppose the motion. PLN will update details of that award when it is made. See: Clemons v. Basham, USDC (E.D. Mo.), Case No. 4:22-cv-00158.
No charges were filed against the guards involved in the incident, though Hart was later convicted on federal charges of possessing child sexual abuse material; he was sentenced to seven years in federal prison in October 2023, as PLN reported. [See: PLN, Dec. 2023, p.63.] “There’s a default equation of Islam and security risk that does not … seem to apply to other faiths,” Civil Litigation Department Head Christina Jump of the Muslim Legal Fund of America told The Appeal. “When it comes to Muslims having access to prayer materials, anything that is in Arabic, the concept of more than one inmate gathering at a time scares some facilities.”
Additional source: The Appeal
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Related legal case
Clemons v. Basham,
| Year | 2026 |
|---|---|
| Cite | USDC (E.D. Mo.), Case No. 4:22-cv-00158 |
| Level | District Court |