After a gang fight erupted in a housing unit at Snake River Correctional Institution in Oregon, officers locked down the area and deployed pepper spray through the entry gate, filling the unit with the chemical irritant.
What happened next became the subject of a seven-day federal trial that concluded Thursday afternoon with a mixed verdict.
The jury found the state Department of Corrections and its officers negligent for failing to follow their own decontamination policy. Two prisoners exposed to the spray on Dec. 9, 2020, including one man with paraplegia, were denied the opportunity to wash their faces, eyes and other exposed skin as soon as possible — a violation of department protocol.
Michael Wesley, who has T-4 paraplegia and uses a wheelchair, was in his cell nearest the entry gate when officers deployed the pepper spray. He was not involved in the fight. Wesley, who is no longer in custody, testified that the spray filled his cell and he was unable to use his cell sink independently to wash away the chemical residue.
James Dentel was naked in a shower stall beside the entry gate when the fight broke out. He shut off the water when he heard the fighting. As officers reached through the gate to spray the chemical agent, a significant amount of the spray hit him.
The exposure was so significant that both Wesley and Dentel started coughing hard and vomited multiple times – Dentel while he was still in the shower stall and Wesley in his cell, they testified.
When officers entered the unit, they ordered Dentel out of the shower immediately. Dentel told officers, “I can’t breathe,” and asked to be allowed to rinse off, but his request was denied, he said.
The jury awarded Wesley, now 45, and Dentel, now 37, $5,000 each for their pain and suffering.
However, the jury did not find that the agency’s negligence rose to the level of cruel and unusual punishment under the Eighth Amendment.
The jury also found no negligence or constitutional violation in the treatment of four other prisoners in the unit who sued, arguing that delays in providing them showers also violated agency policy. The eight-member jury deliberated for about eight hours over two days.
“I’m thrilled that at least some of my clients were heard and vindicated after a six-year fight,” said attorney Juan C. Chavez, one of the lawyers who represented the plaintiffs. “We hope that the Department of Corrections finally learns that they are indeed bound by laws.”
Prison supervisors testified that the corrections officers’ response was “measured” and appropriate.
All the corrections officers and supervisors involved “did their jobs,” argued Nathaniel Aggrey, an Oregon senior assistant attorney general, in his closing argument.
“They’re not the villains,” he said.
After the verdict was announced, Aggrey said he respected the jury’s decisions.
The gang fight erupted in the housing unit at the Oregon prison on the night of Dec. 9, 2020. Officers locked down Unit 3C at 9:18 p.m.
As officers deployed pepper spray from outside the unit through slats in the locked gate, they ordered everyone on the unit to get on the floor. Officers then entered and handcuffed prisoners. About 25 men were placed in disciplinary segregation cells, suspected of participating in the bloody brawl, while the rest were returned to their regular cells.
Three of the men who sued were doused with pepper spray and then locked in disciplinary segregation cells despite having no involvement in the fight. They were forced to wait three days before being allowed to shower, according to court testimony.
Under the corrections department policy, those affected by chemical agents “shall be” permitted to wash their faces, eyes, and other exposed skin areas as soon as possible; permitted to move to an unaffected area as soon as possible after exposure in an enclosed space; have contaminated clothing removed as soon as feasible, with clean clothing made immediately available; and shall be offered a shower as soon as time and circumstances allow if directly sprayed.
“That’s punishing them for a fight they were not involved in,” attorney Hannah Bland, who also represented the plaintiffs, said in her closing argument. The case is not about the officers’ use of the pepper spray, but rather their failure to let prisoners properly wash off the irritant until days after they were doused, she said.
Bland said the prison’s decontamination policy, which was not followed, is intended to keep prisoners safe. “They used so much spray the ground was slick in some areas,” she said.
While locked in their cells, the prisoners would ask corrections officers who passed by if they could take showers, their lawyers said.
“They requested showers and decontamination day in and day out to any guard or nurse who would pass by,” Chavez told jurors. “They are watching the defendants pass by them without a concern for their pain and for their suffering.”
Chavez urged the jury to hold the government liable “for negligently ignoring their own rules,” despite the prisoners’ pleas “to be treated with the dignity and respect that we all deserve in this country.”
Officers provided those directly impacted by the spray with access to sinks in their cells and a change of clothes, but they could not offer showers right away, the officers testified. The housing unit was an active crime scene that needed to be preserved and photographed, they said.
The officers had to wait to lift the unit’s lockdown until after the state police cleared the crime scene, a crew cleaned up the blood and pepper spray residue in the unit’s day room and a prison administrative inquiry into the fight was completed. The first showers were provided two days after the fight; those in segregation got their first shower on Dec. 12, three days after the fight.
“That is not an unreasonably long time, considering the level of this disturbance,” Aggrey said in his closing argument.
State records showed the timeline of events: The fight prompted a lockdown of the unit at 9:18 p.m. on Dec. 9, 2020. State police were called to respond and cleared the crime scene at 9:15 a.m. the next morning. On Dec. 10, 2020, a corrections cleaning crew used 20 mops to clean the pepper spray residue and blood from the fight off the unit’s floor. That day and the next, the prison conducted an administrative investigation into the fight. The lockdown was lifted by noon on Dec. 11, 2020. Some prisoners got showers for the first time later that day while others were allowed to shower for the first time Dec. 12, 2020, three days after exposure to the chemical.
Those taken to segregation cells were offered the use of an eye-washing station and immediately given clean clothes and towels, the state’s lawyers said. Nurses did checks, and no one complained about the chemical irritant, Aggrey said.
James Miller, the Snake River assistant superintendent of security at the time, appeared to contradict the decontamination policy, testifying that being exposed to pepper spray does not always constitute an injury and does not always warrant a medical response.
Officers monitor prisoners they directly target with the pepper spray, Miller testified.
He said he did not consider someone’s secondary exposure to pepper spray to be an injury, and correction officers at Snake River are not required to document someone’s secondary exposure to the chemical. If someone is an unintended target, he testified, there’s no process for documenting that in the prison.
The prisoners could have requested medical care or clean bedding but never did, according to Seth Liechtenstein-Hill, also an Oregon senior assistant attorney general.
The plaintiffs “haven’t proved they were injured,” he told jurors. “Please do not conflate asking for a shower with a serious medical need,” he added.
Kelcie Main, the Americans with Disabilities Act coordinator for the prison, denied Wesley’s grievance that he had limited mobility that prevented him from cleaning off the spray using the sink in his cell.
Under cross-examination by Chavez, Main said she was unaware that Wesley was missing fingers on his left hand and added that he had never complained that the sink wasn’t working for him. She said she later visited Wesley’s cell, got into a wheelchair and wheeled it in to see if the sink would be accessible from a wheelchair.
Wesley typically had an aide with him in his cell, but the night of the fight and for two days later, he did not, according to his lawyers.
“Are you a T4 paraplegic, Ms. Main?” Chavez asked her.
She responded, “No.”
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