No Charges Prison For Guards Who Allegedly Boiled Schizophrenic Black Man to Death

[GMDino]

http://www.miaminewtimes.com/news/florida-wont-charge-prison-guards-who-boiled-schizophrenic-black-man-darren-rainey-to-death-9213190

Quote:On June 23, 2012, Darren Rainey, a schizophrenic man serving time for cocaine possession, was thrown into a prison shower at the Dade Correctional Institution. The water was turned up top 180 degrees — hot enough to steep tea or cook Ramen noodles.

As punishment, four corrections officers — John Fan Fan, Cornelius Thompson, Ronald Clarke and Edwina Williams — kept Rainey in that shower for two full hours. Rainey was heard screaming "Please take me out! I can’t take it anymore!” and kicking the shower door. Inmates said prison guards laughed at Rainey and shouted "Is it hot enough?"


Rainey died inside that shower. He was found crumpled on the floor. When his body was pulled out, nurses said there were burns on 90 percent of his body. 
A nurse said his body temperature was too high to register with a thermometer. And his skin fell off at the touch.


But in an unconscionable decision, Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle's office announced Friday that the four guards who oversaw what amounted to a medieval-era boiling will not be charged with a crime.


“The shower was itself neither dangerous nor unsafe,’’ the report says. “The evidence does not show that Rainey’s well-being was grossly disregarded by the correctional staff.’’


Rundle's office announced the results of its investigation in a Friday afternoon news-dump, the kind that public officials typically only use to bury unflattering news or information. Rundle's office would clearly like this case to vanish over the weekend — but the facts of the case are so inhumanely grotesque that the decision should haunt the office for eternity.


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Rundle took over as Miami-Dade's top prosecutor in the 1990s, after then-State Attorney Janet Reno left to join the Bill Clinton administration. She has remained the state attorney every since. In that time, she has never charged a Miami police officer for an on-duty shooting.

It's important to note that all Rundle had to do to show that she cared was to charge the prison guards with a crime. It is up to a jury to assess guilt. Despite the fact that a man died in a shower, and that multiple witnesses said they saw burns on his body and heard screaming, Rundle didn't think there was enough evidence to bring criminal charges.


Miami Herald investigative reporter Julie K. Brown spoke to multiple witnesses, jail inmates, and staff members, who said the showers were routinely used to scald inmates who acted out or upset the guards. Brown led a 2015 investigative series into abuses at Miami prisons. That series led to lawsuits, firings, rule-changes, and legislative hearings. But Rundle hasn't filed criminal charges.


The New Yorker magazine centered an entire investigation around Rainey's death. The magazine detailed how a whistleblower who tried to speak out about the incident, Harriet Krzykowski, was bullied, harassed, and forced into therapy after trying to speak out about abuses at the jail.


That story called Rainey's treatment torture.



Fernandez Rundle's 72-page close-out memo leans heavily on an autopsy that has been roundly criticized by civil-rights advocates. The report claims Rainey was not found with burns when he died.  Howard Simon, executive director of the Florida American Civil Liberties Association, has said in the past that the autopsy, which was leaked to the press during the investigation, showed that a federal investigation was needed.



Rundle's office, however, noted that one Miami-Dade County cop reported that nurses said Rainey's body had "red areas" on it, and that his skin was, indeed, "slipping off" after being removed from the shower. Rundle's memo said, however, that this could have instead been due to "body decomposition," rather than burns.


"In response to specific questions by Detective Sanchez regarding burns, Dr. [Emma] Lew advised that Rainey did not sustain any obvious external injuries, and, particularly, that there were no thermal injuries (burns) of any kind on his body," the report says. It then adds that from 2012 to 2014, no cause of death was determined.


This was complicated, however, by the fact that Rainey's family members say they were pressured to rapidly cremate his body. If further evidence of a murder existed, it has long been burnt to ashes.


One witness quoted in the Herald and New Yorker pieces, Harold Hempstead, was an inmate serving time for felony robbery charges. Hempstead kept a diary and reported that he heard Rainey's screams.


But Rundle's Friday memo took great pains to disqualify Hempstead's entire diary as innaccurate and unreliable. Multiple inmates told Rundle's office that they heard screams, but the State Attorney claimed the accounts were "inconsistent" and could not be trusted.


"Accordingly and in conclusion," Rundle wrote, "the facts and evidence in this case do not meet the required elements for the filing of any criminal charge."


She then signed her name.

[*bfine32*]

Why do folks have to trivialize this by trying to make it about race?

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 05:51 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Why do folks have to trivialize this by trying to make it about race?

Who is trivializing it? Link?

[GMDino]

(03-19-2017, 06:05 PM)treee Wrote: Who is trivializing it? Link?

The title of the article mentions he is a black man.  This allows some people to completely ignore the issues so they can complain about race even being mentioned.

[*bfine32*]

(03-19-2017, 06:05 PM)treee Wrote: Who is trivializing it? Link?

The title of the article calls him a black man; simply an attempt to make this about race and to dismiss the larger issue. Try this experiment: just put the name Darren Rainey into your search engine, hit enter, and see how fair you have to go to see the word black in the title. I used Yahoo and went 3 pages deep before I quit and never saw it. Yet the one thread that is linked in this forum does so.

Some folks are just not happy unless it is about race. From video clips I saw; at least one of the Officers was black and the man that kept asking them to help Darren is white. But folks that give less than a damn about this man want to use him to support their agenda. 

[*bfine32*]

(03-19-2017, 06:33 PM)GMDino Wrote: The title of the article mentions he is a black man.  This allows some people to completely ignore the issues so they can complain about race even being mentioned.

You should be ashamed of yourself and anyone that fails to call you on the BS should be equally ashamed. 

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 07:42 PM)bfine32 Wrote: The title of the article calls him a black man; simply an attempt to make this about race and to dismiss the larger issue. Try this experiment: just put the name Darren Rainey into your search engine, hit enter, and see how fair you have to go to see the word black in the title. I used Yahoo and went 3 pages deep before I quit and never saw it. Yet the one thread that is linked in this forum does so.

Some folks are just not happy unless it is about race. From video clips I saw; at least one of the Officers was black and the man that kept asking them to help Darren is white. But folks that give less than a damn about this man want to use him to support their agenda. 

I guess it is made about race if you only read the headline and not the actual article. 

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

There has to be more to this than what is stated in the article. In today's climate LEO's are being severely reprimanded for using harsh language. Miami is not known as a hotbed of reactionary conservatism. I have a very hard time reconciling this account and a decision that no charges be filed of any kind, which leads me to believe that the whole story is not being reported in this article.

[Sociopathicsteelerfan]

(03-19-2017, 07:43 PM)bfine32 Wrote: You should be ashamed of yourself and anyone that fails to call you on the BS should be equally ashamed. 

It's his MO, we all know it.

(03-19-2017, 08:03 PM)treee Wrote: I guess it is made about race if you only read the headline and not the actual article. 

I think that was bfine's point.  The story is not about race which begs the question as to why ethnicity was mentioned by the OP in the thread title.

[Belsnickel]

(03-19-2017, 08:20 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: I think that was bfine's point.  The story is not about race which begs the question as to why ethnicity was mentioned by the OP in the thread title.

Looks like he copied that bit from the article title, tbh. Though, in truth, one must ask why the editor of the Miami New Times chose to include it in their title.

[xxlt]

(03-19-2017, 08:25 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Looks like he copied that bit from the article title, tbh. Though, in truth, one must ask why the editor of the Miami New Times chose to include it in their title.

Why include any details in the headline? Why not just say, "Formerly living being no longer living?" The details could be included in the article. No wait, by mentioning any details about the victim or the perpetrators of the act which resulted in his death we would be trivializing it, so no article, just a headline would be better. And maybe it should just say, "Being, which may or may not have formerly been living, now may or may not be dead." Yes, that would be the best way to communicate the pertinent information without bias or prejudice or hurt feelings.

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 08:43 PM)xxlt Wrote: Why include any details in the headline? Why not just say, "Formerly living being no longer living?" The details could be included in the article. No wait, by mentioning any details about the victim or the perpetrators of the act which resulted in his death we would be trivializing it, so no article, just a headline would be better. And maybe it should just say, "Being, which may or may not have formerly been living, now may or may not be dead." Yes, that would be the best way to communicate the pertinent information without bias or prejudice or hurt feelings.

Ha, I get what you're saying. It's probably just an after-affect from the way many major news outfits conducted themselves during the past few years, specifically in regards to what seemed like a deliberate effort to create racial tensions. I do believe minorities are disproportionately affected by unchecked LE (and institutional) power. I also have seen first hand some unsavory reporting (such as referring to fully grown men as children in order to create a more dramatic effect).

[xxlt]

(03-19-2017, 08:57 PM)treee Wrote: Ha, I get what you're saying. It's probably just an after-affect from the way many major news outfits conducted themselves during the past few years, specifically in regards to what seemed like a deliberate effort to create racial tensions. I do believe minorities are disproportionately affected by unchecked LE (and institutional) power. I also have seen first hand some unsavory reporting (such as referring to fully grown men as children in order to create a more dramatic effect).

Yeah, the media has been stoking those racial tensions for decades - ever since they started poking their noses into lynchings and firebombing houses and churches back in the good old days, they have just ratcheted up racial tension in this country when race relations were humming along perfectly fine.

[GMDino]

(03-19-2017, 05:51 PM)bfine32 Wrote: Why do folks have to trivialize this by trying to make it about race?

(03-19-2017, 07:43 PM)bfine32 Wrote: You should be ashamed of yourself and anyone that fails to call you on the BS should be equally ashamed. 

(03-19-2017, 08:20 PM)Sociopathicsteelerfan Wrote: It's his MO, we all know it.


I think that was bfine's point.  The story is not about race which begs the question as to why ethnicity was mentioned by the OP in the thread title.

(03-19-2017, 08:25 PM)Belsnickel Wrote: Looks like he copied that bit from the article title, tbh. Though, in truth, one must ask why the editor of the Miami New Times chose to include it in their title.

And the funny thing is I couldn't care less about the victim's color.  I posted the story for the story.  I guess some people are always looking to deflect?

But fortunately we've now wasted a whole page talking about race by saying it's not about race.

Fantastic work.

I'll try to be more sensitive in future post titles to those among us that want only the purest of information.



As to the story: It seems the person who made the decision to not charge anyone has never charged an officer.  I'd think you would at least in 20+ years seen a officer go to trial to determine innocence once or twice.

[GMDino]

(03-19-2017, 09:06 PM)xxlt Wrote: Yeah, the media has been stoking those racial tensions for decades - ever since they started poking their noses into lynchings and firebombing houses and churches back in the good old days, they have just ratcheted up racial tension in this country when race relations were humming along perfectly fine.

Just like when they talk about black on black crime.  That's doubly racist! 

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 09:06 PM)xxlt Wrote: Yeah, the media has been stoking those racial tensions for decades - ever since they started poking their noses into lynchings and firebombing houses and churches back in the good old days, they have just ratcheted up racial tension in this country when race relations were humming along perfectly fine.

Yea, you're right that it is important to shine a light on those types of injustices. I guess the question becomes where is the line between exposing injustice and pushing a narrative? This isn't directed at you, by the way. This is something that anyone who consumes news should be asking themselves, imo.

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 09:08 PM)GMDino Wrote: Just like when they talk about black on black crime.  That's doubly racist! 

How else are you going to insinuate that black poverty is completely their fault rather than there being institutional bias?

[GMDino]

(03-19-2017, 09:24 PM)treee Wrote: How else are you going to insinuate that black poverty is completely their fault rather than there being institutional bias?

I just wish they stopped labeling it black on black and just label it crime so sensitive folks don't get hurt and distracted by it!  

[treee]

(03-19-2017, 09:26 PM)GMDino Wrote: I just wish they stopped labeling it black on black and just label it crime so sensitive folks don't get hurt and distracted by it!  

If they just labelled it crime, then the world view of people who think that racial prejudice is over wouldn't be confirmed any more.

[GMDino]

(03-19-2017, 09:30 PM)treee Wrote: If they just labelled it crime, then the world view of people who think that racial prejudice is over wouldn't be confirmed any more.

Damn it.  Always a problem!