Mental-health problems, short staffing plague a Texas lockup in COVID lockdown.

by Keri Blakinger, The Marshall Project, originally published July 13, 2020

Source Materials

If things were a little too quiet in a particular cell in the Texas prison, the guards didn’t notice. If one of the two men locked inside didn’t stand up to be counted—a process that is supposed to happen at least nine times a day—no one reported it. If there was an awful smell, nobody said a word.

It wasn’t until Cornelius Harper asked prison staff to check on his cellmate that they realized the man was dead. Had been dead for at least three days. Had been choked and beaten so badly he had dried blood and bruises all over his face.

Given that the prison was on lockdown, there weren’t many suspects. Harper hasn’t been charged, but officials say he killed his cellie and tried to hide it, covering the body with a sheet that rippled in the breeze from the cracked window, mimicking movement.

Some officials have suggested that Harper may have done more, perhaps positioning and repositioning the body of 26-year-old Silvino Núñez to make it seem as if he were alive ...