ABINGDON, Va. – Rain fell in sheets outside the unassuming Abingdon, Va., federal courthouse. Inside the brick building, set along a historic street, an eight day trial was reaching its conclusion. A years-long saga was finally coming to an end early Thursday afternoon.
In courtroom one, the two sides waited for the jury to return with their decision: Are five former corrections officers at Virginia's Marion Correctional Treatment Center liable for the death of Charles Givens, an inmate with health problems and severe mental disabilities?
Givens was found dead in his cell at Marion on Feb. 5, 2022. A year later, Kymberly Hobbs, Givens' grieving sister, sued for $15 million. She alleged that correctional officers Anthony Raymond Kelly, Gregory Scott Plummer, Joshua Jackson and William Zachary Montgomery participated in the savage beating of 52-year-old Givens, breaking his ribs that tore into his spleen, leading him to bleed out and die in his cell. Hobbs alleged in court filings that a fifth guard, Samuel Dale Osborne, didn't participate directly, but did not intervene to save Givens' life.
For eight days, Hobbs' lawyers, Paul Stanley and Mark Krudys, appealed to the six-member jury to find the ex-guards responsible.
The defense vehemently denied the allegations, arguing that Givens, who suffered from a host of medical conditions, had a seizure in his cell and fell on his bed – breaking his ribs that cut into his spleen, leading to the fatal internal bleeding.
A grand jury declined to bring a criminal indictment against the officers back in 2022 and this case "was it" – the one chance for Hobbs to hold people responsible for Givens' death, Stanley said.
For the defense, it represented an opportunity for the five men to clear their names.
NPR first wrote about this case in 2023 in a story that revealed for the first time allegations of abuse. It raised broader questions about the conditions at the specialized facility in southwest Virginia. Givens' records showed he was transferred to a hospital outside of the prison several times over the years — including multiple stays for hypothermia. A month later, the FBI told Hobbs they were investigating Givens' death. The FBI said it had no comment for this story.
The lawsuit and NPR's story led to additional media coverage. The AP revealed last May that other inmates at Marion were hospitalized for hypothermia at least 13 times in three years during cold-weather months. The five now-former guards were suspended from Marion after an investigation was launched into Givens' death. They all resigned or retired from their posts before the investigation ended.
"I think [the Givens case] serves as one of those tip-of-the-iceberg cases that we so often see in jails and prisons," said Madalyn K. Wasilczuk, an assistant law professor at University of South Carolina. She is involved in Incarceration Transparency, a reporting project that collects information on deaths and abuse at prisons, jails and detention centers across South Carolina.
Hobbs' team had an extremely high bar to reach to get the jury to find the five guards liable, said Wasilczuk. Criminal charges for alleged abuse or tied to deaths in prison are "exceedingly rare," she said.
A death in prison can be a warning sign that there are more problems just under the surface, said Wasilczuk. Seeing reports of the hypothermia cases at Marion she said, "without Givens' case that might not have come to light."
A high bar
Just three and a half hours after jurors began their first full day of deliberations, both sides had their answer: The jury found that the guards were not liable for Givens' death.
Hobbs quietly departed the courthouse, hopped in a car with her husband and started her journey back home to Alabama as soon as the verdict was read.
"I'm still trying to process. I can't believe it," she said. "There's just so many unanswered questions. And I'll never get those answers."
Montgomery, who celebrated the win with his family, said he was, "Glad that this three year nightmare is over. Now I can go back to work and get on with my life."
Much of Hobbs' case hinged on the testimony of another inmate at the time, Ron West, who said he witnessed the ex-guards beating Givens in the shower.
Tim McAfee, the counsel for Kelly, Plummer, Jackson and Montgomery, told NPR, "The issue became boiled down to: Was West a credible witness? And I think the answer to that was resounding, 'No, he's not a credible witness.' [The jury] did not believe his account."
West testified that guards took Givens to the showers to clean him up after a medical incident. West cleaned the cell and walked to and from the shower room. This movement was captured on prison surveillance footage.
West testified that while in the shower room for nearly 20 minutes, the Marion officers dumped buckets of cold water on Givens, whipped him with towels and punched him. West also claimed that Osborne stood by as this happened.
"They have lied," Hobbs' attorney Mark Krudys said of the five men accused of beating Givens.
"It's an open and shut case," Krudys told the jury during his closing arguments, citing West's testimony. "There was no exaggeration on his part."
Jeremy O'Quinn, the attorney for Osborne, argued West's testimony changed each time he spoke with investigators, the plaintiffs' attorney and when he took the stand.
Wasilczuk said questioning the credibility of witnesses like West is standard.
In this case, "They know that the person who died was a prisoner and therefore had done something to be in prison. And so with those background dynamics and the trust many people place in law enforcement, it becomes a pretty difficult uphill climb," she said.
"Things like video evidence can help overcome that, but often, when those sorts of evidence are not available, it becomes nearly impossible to get a jury to believe that a prisoner was really subject to abuse," she said.
A medical examination dated a month after Givens' death says clearly that he died from "blunt force trauma," but the examiner, at the time, did not declare it a homicide. Only later did Assistant Chief Medical Examiner Eli Goodman, who prepared the autopsy report, update the report to say Givens died from homicide.
The defense said the timing of Goodman's updated findings were questionably convenient. O'Quinn more aggressively accused Goodman of being "bought and paid for," a claim the plaintiffs strongly denied.
A small victory for Hobbs
Hobbs said she is not considering an appeal.
"I mean, I don't think the outcome would honestly really be any different, unless it was just completely out of that whole area," she said.
From the start, Hobbs believed Givens' death was a coverup. In 2023, Hobbs told NPR that she believed the guards and their bosses lied about what they knew.
On Thursday, she said, "I think it's just a matter of, you have five officers and one inmate and a small town."
Hobbs said during the entire trial, no one from the defense spoke to her or engaged with her in any way.
"Not one person ever said, 'I'm sorry for your loss.'" That would have made a difference, she said.
Montgomery, one of the accused ex-guards, said he never wanted to say anything to Hobbs that could be taken out of context and disrupt the case.
"I'm sorry that her brother passed away, you know, but we had nothing to do with it. We showed up to work that day, and that was the day he passed away and we had nothing to do with it."
In a comment to NPR, the Virginia Department of Corrections said it "has not hidden the truth from anyone in this case" and that the department believes in transparency as part of its services to the state.
The statement continued, "Thursday's verdict confirms what the VADOC has long known: Our best-in-class agency is committed to its mission of ensuring public safety by providing effective incarceration, supervision, and evidence-based re-entry services."
Hobbs said she did all she could to try to get her brother justice.
"Maybe in some small way, you know, his death wasn't in vain, because there have been some small changes," she said.
One, is that the Virginia Department of Corrections added a camera in the shower room of Marion. The VADOC said they never found "any evidence of temperature issues at MCTC."
Montgomery said he's glad there are cameras in the shower room now, too.
"I certainly wish that there would have been a camera in the shower room in 2021 because this would have been over with three years ago and it would have proven our innocence," he said.
"When you're disappointed as we are, I try to find the positives, and that's certainly a positive," Stanley, one of Hobbs' attorneys, said. "And I do believe that facility is much better than it's ever been."
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