Over the past decade, Minnesota’s prisons have experienced officer assaults, lockdowns, and chronic staffing shortages.
“It’s a very sick system,” one former lieutenant told Business Insider.
Officers “have each other’s back,” she said, “even if that means lying.”
Within this troubled system, officers and prisoners said one facility has stood out: Minnesota Correctional FacilityRush City.
“The staff up there are a bunch of cowboys,” a former Rush City lieutenant said.
Officers there “go hands-on much quicker than they would at any other facility,” he added.
“It was a culture that was just ingrained from the day it opened.”
The routine brutality earned Rush City a moniker: Gladiator School.
It was the day a prisoner bashed in James Vandevender’s head.
A prisoner had swung at Vandevender’s head with a four-by-four wooden post.
Bonga watched in shock as the man, later identified as Mark Latimer, continued his methodical attack.
Surveillance footage obtained by BI corroborates Bonga’s account.
A few seconds later he’s back, and this time he quickly pulls out a wooden post.
No officers are visible in the video; the unguarded woodshop wasn’t operating that day.
In the surveillance footage, Latimer saunters several hundred feet across the workshop with the four-by-four.
He spent 45 days in a coma and woke up 40 pounds lighter.
Hisface was numb, and he couldn’t speak or read.
Years later, the effects of Vandevender’s traumatic brain injury persist.
Tests indicated a decline in cognitive function.
Seizures have forced him to take epilepsy medication.
Deep depression sent him in search of meth, which landed him at Rush City again.
When Vandevender arrived back, about four years later, Bonga thought he was seeing a ghost.
No one thought he could have survived that beating.
The prisoner said the guard told him it wasnone of his businessand “not to worry about it.”
“Same thing with Vandevender.”
At Rush City, he said, there is just one.
“I find the lack of work material accountability to be unacceptable practice,“he wrote.
The department confirmed that there have been no such changes at Rush City.
He said that “everything’s incremental” when it comes to corrections reform.
“It’s always give-and-take.”
In practice, these decisions made it difficult for prisoners to assert their constitutional rights.
One of those pivotal cases was 1994’s Farmer v. Brennan.
All of the remaining pro se cases settled, often for modest amounts.
Here’s what it takes.
Butsuch cases were rare.
He said he waited 90 minutes before being sent to the hospital, where the fingers were amputated.
The South Dakota Department of Corrections did not respond to requests for comment.
Piersol said his decision spoke for itself, but he agreed to comment on Eighth Amendment cases generally.
“It’s difficult for a prisoner to succeed,” Piersol said.
“But sometimes there are some decent settlements.”
Dunkelberger’s claim couldn’t meet that high bar.
Vandevender’s didn’t either.
Hedismissed the casebefore Vandevender could take discovery.
“I’m not sure what more you could possibly do to show deliberate indifference,” he said.
“It really is a troubling standard that the 8th Circuit has employed here.”
Again and again, courts dismissed these cases, finding that prisoners had failed to meet the deliberate-indifference standard.
The New York and Michigan corrections departments did not respond to requests for comment.
Of the cases in BI’s sample, 1,361 were argued under the deliberate-indifference standard.
Only 10 plaintiffs prevailed in court; another 164 cases settled without the prison admitting liability.
All 10 of the successful plaintiffs were among the minority in the sample who were represented by counsel.
“I didn’t knowthat this person was having chest pains because they were experiencing a heart attack.”
“What is the easiest lie to tell?”
“I didn’t know.”
About this time, a Texas prisoner named J.W.
It was a consequential decision.
It was also, fatefully, the court’s introduction of the phrase “deliberate indifference.”
That shift occurred quickly.
The impact of these policies is now well known.
The decision also cemented the current deliberate-indifference standard.
Someissued warningsat the time.
In his own concurring opinion, Blackmun described the new standard as fundamentally misguided.
“A punishment is simply no less cruel or unusual because its harm is unintended,” he wrote.
Vandevender is one of hundreds of prisoners in BI’s sample for whom those obstacles were insurmountable.
This time, officials were repeatedly warned of the risk.
Trina Murray was at home in bed one night when she got the call.
She was confused; her daughter never phoned that late.
She knew what Minnesota’s prisons could be like, having worked in two of them.
When she reported the behavior, she became the target of a campaign of retaliation.
The officers, all men, followed her to her car.
They called her the N-word, she said, and told her to go back to Africa.
Later someone threw a rock through the window of her home.
Eventually, she quit.
After the call that evening in September 2018, she scrambled to learn what had happened to her son.
Osgood grabbed Hodges' locs, ripping some out, and attempted to stab him.
Osgood also denied Hodges' account in a message to BI, calling it a “fabricated narrative.”
Hodges begged officers to move him to a different unit, verbally and in writing.
“What exactly must he do to get a transfer to another facility for his safety?”
his fiancee asked ina late-October emailto the warden at the time, Jeffrey Titus.
“Why must something really bad happen before he is taken seriously.”
Their deliberations, a former corrections staffer at Rush City told BI, are usually documented in great detail.
Schnell, the corrections commissioner, said he expected his staffers to fully document incompatibility reviews.
Surveillance video shows Hodges trying to escape as the two men come toward him.
Medical records show he suffered a nasal fracture, second-degree burns, and an eye injury.
The window blinds concealed a barbed-wire fence just outside.
He wears wire-framed glasses now, to help with the blurred vision he’s lived with since the attack.
“I had a lot of sleepless nights,” he said.
“Every time I think about the situation, I’ll have flashbacks.”
With Vandevender, the court’s ruling hinged on the fact that he’d experienced a surprise attack.
But the attack on Hodges came after a campaign of urgent warnings that he feared for his life.
Hodges' claim failed.
Less than a week later, he said, he was stabbed in the facility’s day room.
Each of these claims was dismissed under the deliberate-indifference standard.
“Our caselaw establishes a higher standard for deliberate indifference.”
Many corrections officers are made aware of the mindset standard.
As Oregon’straining materialssay, “basically, deliberate indifference is a cognitive choice to do what you did.”
Many of the materials, he said, appear to train officers to treat prisoner complaints with suspicion.
“It’s good to train them on the law,” Fathi said.
He had moved there from Minnesota, after his last prison stint, looking for a fresh start.
He was dressed in khakis for his job installing high-end appliances.
It was a tricky job, Vandevender said.
By late afternoon, visibly frustrated, he called the installation a “fucking joke.”
“He’s been having memory issues all day long.
It’s an everyday thing,” he said of Vandevender.
“That’s when he gets frustrated.”
But since the assault, they both said, he’s struggled to communicate.
He’s forgetful, irritable, and prone to snap.
Peggy said he relied on scribbled notes to get through the day.
“It shouldn’t have happened,” she said.
“It was because of their lack of watching the people,” she added.
“It was due to their negligence.”
“I want to,” Vandevender said.
When the video finished, there was a long silence.
Eventually, he started talking.
“I don’t want to talk about it,” he said.
