Jail Story Archives - West Virginia Public Broadcasting

Regional Jails Undergo Investment Reform, Recruitment Efforts

Regional jails in West Virginia have long struggled with staffing and safety issues. Investment reforms and recruiting efforts from state leadership aim to solve these issues.

As West Virginia’s strained jail system faces ongoing safety concerns, reinvestment and recruitment efforts aim to amend facility issues on a state level.

The Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority convened for a public meeting Monday at the State Capitol. Their meeting centered around changes to staffing and oversight in the state’s jail facilities.

West Virginia’s jail system has come under national scrutiny for the alleged mistreatment of people who are incarcerated, including neglect, water deprivation and the deaths of tens of individuals in less than five years.

Last year, eight correctional officers at Southern Regional Jail in Beaver were charged over an assault that led to the death of a man who was incarcerated in the facility.

Carl Reynolds, senior legal and policy advisor at the Council of State Governments (CSG) Justice Center, spoke to lawmakers about “justice reinvestment” — the reallocation of funds from jails to other areas of the criminal justice system.

By providing investments “further upstream,” like in law enforcement, victim services and parole supervision, Reynolds said the state’s jail system can reduce expenses associated with incarceration.

The CSG Justice Center uses federal funds to work with officials on the state level and analyze data pertaining to state criminal justice systems. They then advise state leadership on potential changes to make.

Justice reinvestment refers to the reallocation of funding for jails toward other areas of the criminal justice system.

*Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography*

Reynolds said representatives from his organization have met with leaders from all three branches of government in West Virginia and have received approval to pursue this work in the Mountain State.

Justice reinvestment is an idea that West Virginia has recently begun to embrace.

Gov. Jim Justice awarded more than $2.6 million in grant funds to treatment supervision programs across the state in 2023, followed by an additional $2.4 million in 2024. These programs offer substance abuse interventions to some individuals convicted of felony drug offenses.

Reynolds said that his organization is currently collecting information and ideas from state officials on how to approach reinvestment efforts in West Virginia.

“This is an open-minded, open-ended process where we want to find out what’s important to you all and to the other stakeholders in the system,” he said.

In the meantime, recruitment efforts in West Virginia jails could also address issues in the West Virginia corrections system, according to Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation (DCR).

Mirandy said Monday that recruitment efforts have been “nothing more than miraculous over the past few months.”

Since Jan. 1, Mirandy said the DCR has hired 291 correctional officers and 49 additional, non-officer personnel members. Also since Jan. 1, 162 individuals have completed DCR corrections training, he said.

Pat Mirandy, chief of staff for the West Virginia Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation, updates lawmakers on recruitment efforts in West Virginia’s jail system.

*Photo Credit: Will Price/WV Legislative Photography*

Union representatives have long said that understaffing in the state’s jail system has created additional safety risks for workers, which also extend to individuals who are incarcerated.

In 2022, Justice issued a state of emergency proclamation over the staffing issues, which allowed members of the West Virginia National Guard to fill in vacancies in the jail system.

But the ongoing recruiting efforts could mean National Guard members will no longer be needed in the state’s jail system, Mirandy said.

At the beginning of the year, Mirandy said 413 National Guard members were working for the DCR. Now, that number has fallen to approximately 80.

During the meeting, Del. Bryan Ward, R-Hardy, said these staffing improvements marked “a lot to be proud of” for the agency.

Mirandy said that by May the DCR anticipates only five guard members will remain with the agency, staying on to complete “paperwork that needed to be done to close out the soldiers that we had in our facilities.”

“Because of the success of our recruiting efforts, we’ve been able to draw down the National Guard’s footprint in our agency,” he said. “Our plan to eventually achieve no guardsmen in our facilities will be a reality soon.”

Virginia Doctor Who Prescribed More Than 500k Doses Of Opioids Granted New Trial

Authorities said Joel Smithers headed a drug distribution ring that contributed to the opioid abuse crisis in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

A Virginia doctor who was sentenced to 40 years in prison after prescribing more than half a million doses of highly addictive opioids in two years has been granted a new trial by a federal appeals court that found the instructions given to jurors at his trial misstated the law.

Joel Smithers was convicted in 2019 of more than 800 counts of illegally prescribing drugs.

During his trial, prosecutors said patients from five states drove hundreds of miles to see him to get prescriptions for oxycodone, fentanyl and other powerful painkillers. Authorities said Smithers headed a drug distribution ring that contributed to the opioid abuse crisis in Kentucky, Ohio, Tennessee, Virginia and West Virginia.

In a ruling issued Friday, a three-judge panel of the Richmond-based 4th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated Smithers’ convictions and ordered a new trial.

Jurors at Smithers’ trial were instructed that in order to find Smithers guilty of illegally prescribing drugs, they must find that he did so “without a legitimate medical purpose or beyond the bounds of medical practice.”

But the appeals court found that that jury instruction was improper, citing a 2022 U.S. Supreme Court ruling that said a defendant must “knowingly or intentionally” act in an unauthorized manner to be guilty of that charge. Even though the jury convicted Smithers in 2019, his case was subject to the 2022 Supreme Court decision because his appeal was still pending when that ruling was issued.

Justice Roger Gregory, who wrote the 3-0 opinion for the 4th Circuit panel, cited Smithers’ testimony at his trial, when he said almost all of his patients had had significant car or workplace accidents and that he believed there was a legitimate medical purpose for each of the prescriptions he wrote. Gregory wrote that even though “a jury might very well not have believed Smithers’ testimony that he acted with a legitimate medical purpose,” the defense provided evidence that could have led to a finding of not guilty on each of the unlawful distribution charges against Smithers.

“In sum, because there was evidence upon which a jury could have reached a contrary finding, the instructional errors were not harmless,” Gregory wrote.

During Smithers’ trial, a receptionist testified that patients would wait up to 12 hours to see Smithers, who sometimes kept his office open past midnight. Smithers did not accept insurance and took in close to $700,000 in cash and credit card payments over two years, prosecutors said.

“We understand the 4th circuit decision following a recent change in the law and look forward to retrying the defendant, ” U.S. Attorney Christopher Kavanaugh said in a statement Monday.

Beau Brindley, an attorney for Smithers, said that since the 2022 Supreme Court decision, “only one thing decides a doctor’s guilt or innocence: his own subjective beliefs about his prescriptions.”

“Under this new legal standard, with the focus now solely on his intent, Dr. Smithers looks forward to being fully exonerated at trial,” Brindley said in a statement.

Advocates Call For Sweeping Reform In W.Va.’s Jail System

Advocates and families of incarcerated people in West Virginia will gather inside the capitol building in the lower rotunda on Saturday morning.

Following the indictment of six former correctional officers in the beating death of Quantez Burks and the death of an additional inmate at Southern Regional Jail, families will join the West Virginia Poor People’s Campaign (WVPPC) to challenge the state legislature, governor and West Virginia’s U.S. Senators at a press conference Saturday morning.

At 11 a.m. Repairers of the Breach President Bishop William J. Barber II, Forward Justice, clergy and community supporters will gather in the lower rotunda of the Capitol to call for a full federal investigation into local prisons by the Department of Justice.

Pam Garrison, one of the Chairs of the WVPPC said recent legislative measures aren’t even a Band-Aid to the problems within the system.

“They always get the little guys, the little guys are the ones who always pay the price,” Garrison said. “But the ones who are, who have instigated, who have put these policies in that has the lack of policy, the lack of oversight, the lack of accountability, that lies down Charleston.”

Advocates claim that in the past five years, at least 25 people have died at the Southern Regional Jail alone, with inmates reporting chronic understaffing, overcrowding and neglect. This claim is backed up by reporting from Mountain State Spotlight.

There were 13 reported deaths at the Southern Regional Jail in 2022, and more than 100 deaths in the state’s regional jail system in the past decade.

“They put them in jail or they charge them with something like they’re trash, like they don’t matter, like they can just do anything to them,” Garrison said. “Well, I got news for them. They’ve got families and they got rights.”

Two Top W.Va. Corrections Officials Fired, Missing Documents Found

The positions held by Brad Douglas, the former interim corrections commissioner and recent executive officer for the jails system, and Phil Sword, chief counsel for the homeland security agency have been terminated.

Abraham also said the emails, grievances and other documents requested in a class-action lawsuit against the state that were thought to be purged, have been recovered. He says all the information has been located in electronic and paper form at the Southern Regional Jail (SRJ) and is available to be turned over to the court.

The Wednesday firings follow a Justice media briefing where the governor said any parties guilty of intentionally destroying evidence should be terminated or jailed.

“When people are directed to not destroy something, or to supply something, and then they just don’t,” Justice said. “I think that it will be a very long and difficult day for those folk.”

U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar J. Aboulhosn ruled Monday that state employees intentionally destroyed emails and documents relating to a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County.

In the briefing, Justice referred questions about the emails to his Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia, who said destroying the emails was not intentional. He said there were administrative failures in preserving that evidence and some people were disciplined.

In producing discovery evidence regarding the civil suit, the state was ordered to put a legal hold on the emails and documents that were later deleted. Sorsaia blamed an automatic email deletion policy regarding outgoing state employees. Abraham now says the documents deleted elsewhere have always been in possession of Corrections personnel at the SRJ.

Aboulhosn recommended a default judgment, holding the state liable for the charges in the lawsuit. Aboulhosn’s judgment will now go before District Judge Frank W. Volk to be confirmed. The defendants in the case have 14 days to object to the judgment and “modify or set aside any portion of the Order found clearly to be erroneous or contrary to law.”

WVPB knows of no action taken yet in light of the new discovery findings.

The judge also ordered the court clerk to send a copy of the order to the United States Attorney to consider an investigation of the West Virginia Department of Corrections and Rehabilitations.

Former W.Va. Lawmaker Gets 3 Months In Jan. 6 Riot

A former West Virginia lawmaker who livestreamed himself on Facebook storming the U.S. Capitol and cheering on what he described as a “revolution” was sentenced Wednesday to three months in prison.

Derrick Evans, 37, who pleaded guilty to a felony civil disorder charge, told the judge that he regrets his actions every day and is a “good person who unfortunately was caught up in a moment.”

“I will forever bear the reminder that I made a crucial mistake. I’ve let down myself, I’ve let down my community and most importantly I’ve let down my family,” Evans told the judge.

The Republican from Prichard, West Virginia, was sworn in as a member of the state’s House of Delegates just weeks before the Jan. 6, 2021, riot that halted the certification of President Joe Biden’s victory and left more than 100 police officers injured. Evans was arrested two days after the riot and promptly resigned a month before the start of the legislative session, so he never served a day in the legislature.

Prosecutors had sought the three months behind bars, describing Evans as a leader in the riot who escalated the chaos at the Capitol by enthusiastically egging on the rioters around him.

U.S. District Judge Royce Lamberth told Evans said time behind bars was necessary to reflect the seriousness of Evans’ actions and help prevent something like the riot from ever happening again.

“I can’t just give you probation in a case like this. It doesn’t reflect the feelings of the community. It doesn’t reflect the feelings of the country about what happened that day,” Lamberth said.

“I don’t want another riot the next election. I don’t want this to happen again, so I’m going to do what I can,” the judge added.

In the days leading up to the riot, Evans told his 30,000 Facebook followers to “Fight For Trump” in the nation’s capital, according to court documents. On the day of the riot, he skipped then- President Donald Trump’s speech and went straight to the Capitol, where he used his cellphone to record the melee for more than an hour, prosecutors said.

In a since-deleted cell phone video that was widely shared online, Evans gleefully narrated the riot for his Facebook followers, cheered on the crowd and fist bumped rioters as he and the rest of the mob swarmed the Capitol and jammed inside.

“Guys, oh my gosh, I can’t even explain what is happening right now, how amazing this is to see in person. I am in awe. The revolution has started. The revolution has started!” he said, according to court documents.

After pushing inside the Capitol, he shouted: “We’re in! Derrick Evans is in the Capitol!”

About 15 minutes after leaving the building, he texted a friend to ask if he should delete the video “so there’s no evidence” of his actions, court records show.

“Even while he was filming the livestream he knew what was happening around him was not lawful,” Assistant U.S. Attorney Kathryn Fifield told the judge, noting that at one point Evans speculated that Trump would “pardon anybody who gets arrested” for going in the Capitol.

Evans’ attorney urged the judge for probation, noting that the former lawmaker didn’t engage in any violence or destruction and was heard on the video urging others not to do so. Attorney Paul Taylor argued in court documents the video suggests “a certain naivete” and “lack of experience, wisdom or judgement rather than primarily criminal intent.”

Evans, a former teacher and football coach, is among more than 300 people who have pleaded guilty in connection to the riot. Defendants have admitted to crimes ranging from misdemeanors to felony seditious conspiracy.

Sentences have ranged from probation for those who admitted to petty offenses to more than five years in prison for a man who attacked police officers working to hold back the angry mob.

W.Va. DNR Police To Help With Jail, Prison Staffing

Division of Natural Resources police officers will assist with staffing challenges at West Virginia’s jails and prisons.

More than 60 DNR officers have finished training for support roles that will enable corrections officers to perform other duties, the state Department of Homeland Security said in a news release Thursday.

The topics during eight hours of instruction last week included staff and inmate interactions, dealing with contraband and restricted items, and sexual assault law. Additional training, including security checks, staffing facility control towers and hospital detail, will be provided once the participating officers are assigned to a facility, the statement said.

The support roles could start as early as this weekend. DNR police officers will work their regular schedules for their agencies and work at corrections facilities on overtime. The Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation will reimburse the DNR police for the staffing costs.

Currently there are 921 inmates and 231 jail and prison staff with positive coronavirus cases, according to state health figures.