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Guard tells of inmate's beating
By THOMAS C. TOBIN STARKE -- Corrections officer Raymon C. Hanson tugged at a Kleenex and cried as he told how his fellow officers beat inmate Frank Valdes and later made jokes, teasing each other about which of them would be lovers when they all went to prison for the attack. Then, Hanson said, they openly falsified their reports over iced tea. A prosecutor asked why Hanson, 33, did nothing when a sergeant kept kicking Valdes "as hard as anybody could," and a captain zapped the bloodied, unresponsive inmate in the head with a stunning device, against prison policy. "I don't know," the 300-pound, 6-foot-5 Hanson said, his voice cracking. "I wish I would have been a bigger man when he was in his cell." Guards later took Valdes to the prison clinic, where medics pronounced him fit to return to his cell. It was then that Hanson, disturbed by the violence, tagged along with fellow guards as they carted Valdes away in a wheelchair. "I didn't want Valdes beaten anymore, so I accompanied him down the hallway," he said. The dramatic account came during a 68-minute videotaped statement released Thursday by prosecutors, who plan to call Hanson next week as one of their star witnesses in the second-degree murder trial of four former guards at Florida State Prison. Hanson gave the statement in January 2000 and will receive immunity for his testimony. Valdes died July 17, 1999, when some of the same guards accused of beating him started performing CPR on his body. He was found limp, wet and not breathing after suffering what prosecutors say was a day of beatings by guards who were fed up with his crude and defiant behavior. Valdes, on death row for killing a corrections officer in 1987, was housed on X Wing, a section at the end of the prison that houses Florida's death chamber and is home to the state's most troublesome inmates. The guards -- Capt. Timothy A. Thornton, Sgt. Charles A. Brown, Sgt. Jason P. Griffis and Sgt. Andrew W. Lewis -- also are charged with conspiring to batter Valdes, felony battery and official misconduct, accused of falsifying their reports. Lawyers for the defendants declined to comment Thursday, noting Hanson's testimony had not yet been heard by the jury. Their defense is that Valdes was fine the morning of July 17 after the guards rousted him from his cell during a rough "extraction" or "catch." Thornton ordered the operation after Valdes threatened another guard, Montrez Lucas. The fatal injuries, the guards contend, likely came that afternoon when Valdes flung himself around his cell. They also say it could have come at the hands of Lucas, who also is charged in Valdes' death and will be tried this year with three other guards. But prosecutors insist Valdes was so incapacitated by the morning beating that he would not have been so active. Released Thursday along with Hanson's statement were thousands of pages of investigative documents, including statements by inmates who said Valdes was repeatedly beaten by guards that afternoon. Between beatings, the inmates said, the guards would check to see how Valdes was doing. Hanson returned to other duties that afternoon. As his shift ended and he left to pick up his daughter, he learned from his replacement that Valdes had died. "I was shocked -- like a ton of bricks hitting me," Hanson said in his statement, conducted under the stern questioning of former State Attorney Rod Smith. He began with the tale of the "cell extraction" on the morning of July 17. Hanson said Thornton had summoned him, along with Brown, Griffis, Lewis and guard Robert Sauls, to perform the extraction. Valdes had been threatening Lewis and refused to be handcuffed so guards could search his cell. Also, according to the defense, Thornton had sprayed chemical gas into Valdes' cell to no effect, then threw a chemical grenade that failed to go off, giving Valdes a weapon. As they suited up with pads and protective vests and helmets, Hanson said, the other guards talked as if the reason for the extraction was to teach Valdes a lesson with "some physical punishment." Hanson, the biggest of the four-member "catch team," entered Valdes' cell first, holding an electronic shield. The inmate, he said, was "in a fetal position trying to protect as much of himself as he could." Still, some or all of the other guards kept punching and kicking him, Hanson said. Hanson backed off after inadvertently stunning another guard with his shield. He saw Valdes face down with his legs kicking and stepped on his ankles. He also kicked his buttocks, he said. Hanson said he left the cell for a few moments because of the gas that lingered there. He returned to find Brown still kicking Valdes. Valdes was "just laying there," Hanson said. And Brown "was saying, "Who you going to kill now, m----- f-----? Who you going to kill now?' " Hanson, his voice cracking, said he went to get some leg irons, hoping that shackling Valdes would tone down the violence. Thornton zapped Valdes in the head with a stunning device, which Hanson said was contrary to the training he received. "It was wrong," he said, adding that guards are told not to use such devices on anyone's head or genitals or a woman's breasts. Later, after Valdes was dragged out of the cell, Thornton slapped him across the face and ordered him taken to the prison clinic. Valdes never resisted or responded to the blows, Hanson said. In the clinic, when the inmate brought his legs to his chest, Griffis punched him in the midsection, which caused him to sit up. Brown slammed him down and spoke to him in Spanish, Hanson said. After Valdes was taken back to X Wing, the guards joked about being sent to prison for the beating. Some of them teased each other about who would be whose "b------" behind bars, Hanson said. They met in a room where a trusted inmate served them sandwiches and iced tea. Hanson said they waited until the medical reports on Valdes came back from the clinic so they could match their accounts with his body bruises. Hanson said he hesitated. "I didn't know what they wanted me to say." At the other officers' urging, he wrote that Valdes was trying to strike the officers, that the inmate was using the grenade and the grenade pin as a weapon, that he had to zap Valdes three times. None of it was true, Hanson told Smith. He said of Valdes' bruises: "We tried to cover them up by lying about it."
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