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Guards trial may not be clear-cut
By THOMAS C. TOBIN STARKE -- Prison nurse Denise McEarchern stepped to the witness stand last week as a prosecution witness against three guards accused of beating an inmate to death. She may have helped the defense. Through sobs, she told jurors that Florida Department of Law Enforcement agents pressured her to say that she had seen one of the guards slap inmate Frank Valdes in the clinic at Florida State Prison. When she denied seeing that, the agents threatened her, she said, asking who would care for her family while she was in jail. "They told me I was lying," McEarchern said. "I kept telling them I was telling the truth." Her testimony may have fueled the guards' claim that the state's investigation was "botched" and desperate. But the setback was relatively small for prosecutors, who are battling a larger problem: Despite a badly beaten body and four weeks of testimony, their case against the guards relies heavily on circumstantial evidence. As they rested their case on Thursday, prosecutors conceded that the panel of five men and one woman must be able to connect dots, look for "patterns" of behavior, put small events in a larger "context" and apply "common sense." "It's the best that they have, and compounding the difficulty is the fact that they have to rely on the testimony of convicted felons," said Guy Rubin, a Stuart attorney who has been following the case and has worked with the prosecutors. He also has filed a federal civil rights lawsuit in Jacksonville against the state on behalf of Valdes and other inmates. After 43 witnesses in the criminal case, no single statement or piece of evidence stands completely on its own. Two doctors who did an autopsy on Valdes say it is clear he was stomped to death, but prosecutors have been unable to pinpoint a time of death or show with any certainty who administered the fatal blows. "The jury's going to have to have some faith in that regard," Rubin said. "It's a good case for one of the lesser charges." In addition to second-degree murder, former guards Timothy A. Thornton, Charles A. Brown and Jason P. Griffis are charged with conspiracy to commit aggravated battery, felony battery on an inmate and official misconduct for allegedly falsifying reports. With surprises like McEarchern's testimony, it hasn't been an ideal case, said lead prosecutor Greg McMahon, based in Gainesville. "Some days you're more pleased than others," he said of the incomplete timeline the state has laid out for the Bradford County jury. "But I think the story overall has been told well." The story, according to prosecutors, begins 70 miles north of Florida State Prison. It was July 4, 1999, when a pregnant female corrections officer was injured during a melee at Hamilton Correctional Institution in Jasper. The five inmates involved were transferred to Florida State Prison's X-wing, which is reserved for the state's most incorrigible prisoners. Six days later, after the female officer suffered a miscarriage, the so-called "Hamilton Five" say they were beaten and abused by Thornton, who was a captain, and Brown and Griffis, both former sergeants. Frank Valdes, an outspoken death row inmate serving time on X-wing, threatened to report the "Hamilton Five" beatings to the media. That, according to prosecutors, is the motive for the guards attacking the 36-year-old Valdes on July 17, 1999. That morning, Thornton ordered Valdes removed from his cell for a search because the inmate had threatened an X-wing officer, Sgt. Montrez Lucas. When Valdes refused to be handcuffed from inside his cell, Thornton tried to get him to comply by squirting a chemical spray into the 6-by-9-foot space. When that didn't work, he tried a gas grenade, which didn't go off and provided Valdes with a weapon. Prosecutors doubt the grenade attempt ever happened. They say it was fabrication by guards to justify Thornton's next step, a "cell extraction," which provided the cover for a spate of "gratuitous violence" on Valdes. Their argument is that no grenade has ever been found and no knowledgeable officer would throw a grenade into the cell of a violent inmate like Valdes when he could just as easily set it off outside the bars. Under prison policy an extraction involves five guards who plow into a cell with riot gear and an electric shield and remove the inmate with as little force as possible. For Valdes, the team included Brown and Griffis and was supervised by Thornton. The defense says the extraction was carried out according to prison rules. But former guard Raymon Hanson, who led the team with the shield, has testified that Brown kicked Valdes several times during the extraction and that Thornton zapped him on the head with a stunning device afterward. An inmate, convicted murderer Steven Porkolab, testified he was ordered to clean up large amounts of blood. But both Hanson, and his older brother, another guard who testified for the state, said they saw very little blood. Others saw Valdes after the morning extraction but their recollections were mixed. Depending on whom the jury believes, Valdes was either fine with just a cut lip and some scratches or he was badly beaten with blood everywhere, moaning and groaning and moving in and out of consciousness. How the jury interprets the extraction evidence will determine whether the guards will be found guilty of battery. After Valdes is taken to the prison clinic, the story picks up back on X-wing, where prosecutors say he was fatally beaten. On this point, the key testimony is from inmate Castro Flores, serving a life sentence for armed robbery and attempted murder. Flores told the jury he heard the sounds of a hand hitting a body in cell next door. "I figured it was an inmate getting beat up," he told the jury. He said he'd been keeping track of assaults on inmates and recorded the incident in his Bible. He wrote it, he said, on a page with 2 Corinthians and verse that reads, "For we can do nothing against the truth, but for the truth." He said he heard Valdes stop breathing around 3 p.m. According to Thornton's report, Thornton saw Valdes about 2 p.m. grabbing his cell bars and letting himself fall backward. The inmate reportedly struck the cell's stainless steel bunk on the way to the cement floor. According to Thornton, Valdes said he was fine. The captain said he informed a prison nurse and was walking back to the prison control room when a call came from an X-wing officer that Valdes was not breathing. The two doctors who testified early in the case said there was no way Valdes could have died from his backward fall. "Somebody committed a murder here," said Rubin, the civil attorney. The jury also heard from corrections officer George Hanson, who said he looked in on Valdes that afternoon, turning on the light switch outside the cell for two seconds. He said he saw the inmate lying on the floor nude with his legs propped against the wall and his feet crossed. He saw no life-threatening injuries. He said the inmate was making a noise that sounded like, "Uh...Uh." As with other evidence, this has been interpreted two ways. Prosecutors say it is Valdes in the final minutes of life, and that Hanson could not have seen the injuries during his two-second inspection. Defense attorneys say it is a picture of Valdes resting in his cell, doing fine. Lawyers for all three defendants have suggested that Valdes was beaten by one of four other guards who will stand trial later. Meanwhile, prosecutors will ask jurors to consider that second-degree murder is also defined as "an indifference to human life" arising from "ill will, hatred, spite or an evil intent." Even if the guards didn't strike the blows that killed Valdes, prosecutors say, they were in a position to have known about his condition and should have gotten help. When defense attorneys moved to have that line of prosecution dropped last week, Circuit Judge Larry G. Turner denied them, saying it was a "viable theory." The defense will call its own witnesses beginning today.
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From the Times state desk
From the state wire
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