Ricky Martin
"Accomplices" may be too mild a term for what happened at the Santa Rosa Correctional Institution nearly three years ago.
Julie K. Brown at the Miami Herald reported the story Saturday after an intensive investigation by the newspaper.
I've done time in reform school where I was raped and otherwise brutalized. I've spent time in the adult slam as a political prisoner—for refusing to be drafted in the Vietnam War era. I've covered cops and courts as a reporter. I wrote, decades ago, extensively about the brutal mistreatment of prisoners. I've also covered the failure of progressives to put prison reform anywhere near the top of their concerns despite the fact our nation incarcerates people at a rate higher than any other nation by a long way and despite the fact that the majority of those in prison are there for nonviolent offenses.
Over the course of many years of such stuff, it's hard not to become a bit hardened to what's going on.
Nonetheless, Brown's story had me grinding my molars before I was a third of the way through. So, fair warning before you read the story:
Ricky Martin was found lying in a pool of blood on the floor of cell D1-117. His arms were tied behind him and his feet bound together with white strips of cloth.
A pair of bloody boxer shorts had been slipped over his head, and another piece of linen was wrapped around his neck. The slight, 24-year-old inmate was nearly naked, with his shorts pulled down to his ankles.
Bloody hand prints, smeared on the wall facing the cell door, told the story of his brutal death, and of cries for help—from him and others on his behalf—that went unheeded.
Martin, a convicted burglar from Naples who had seven months left on his prison term, was bludgeoned savagely. His skull was smashed. His face was swollen, bloody, black and blue, and he was cut all over his body.
That murder occurred within 36 hours of Martin's being transferred to the Santa Rosa lock-up.
More about this gruesome, infuriating story below the fold.
No mystery about who raped and murdered him. The killer was his cellmate, Shawn “Jiggaman” Rogers, a 6-foot, 4-inch, 210-pound convict with a record of attacking and beating up other inmates. He admitted he killed Martin and asked a judge for the death penalty.
You might be saying, "sad, but that's what happens in prison." And, after all, Martin was no model prisoner.
But this wasn't "just" a case of a prisoner killing another prisoner. Rogers had help: Prison authorities may have encouraged his death. But, at the very least, they were recklessly indifferent to his situation at a facility housing inmates who are considered the "worst of the worst." Given Martin's record, he hardly fit that category.
Martin, who was raised by his grandparents after his parents were murdered when he was two years old, said he feared for his life at the Northwest Florida Reception Center—another Florida maximum security prison—because he had informed prison authorities of a "fight club" that guards were running in the facility's cafeteria. He told authorities that guards named in his complaint had told inmates that he "snitched" and now they and officers were after him.
When he was transferred to Santa Rosa, he was, within hours, placed in a cell with Rogers. The sworn statements of 28 individually interviewed inmates showed investigators that many had told the guards to get Martin out of the cell, that he was in trouble. They did nothing.
The Florida Department of Law Enforcement is the appropriate authority for carrying out investigations into such crimes. But FDLE, according the Herald, never did so. Instead, the Florida Department of Corrections inspector general investigated. And he interviewed just one corrections officer—John Beaudry—for nine minutes. Beaudry claimed he had checked the cell and everything was fine.
That wasn't what cameras and inmates indicated:
Several inmates reported hearing high-pitched screams and thuds coming from the cell. Several said they heard resounding smacks, and that Rogers was slapping the stricken cellmate hard on his bare buttocks.
Upon realizing what was happening, some inmates shouted for Rogers to stop and “put him on the door”—prison lingo for having him removed from the cell. Rogers apparently did pull back, as Beaudry re-entered the wing at 7 p.m. for a security check.
The fixed-wing video, which has no audio, shows that at 7:01 p.m., Beaudry paused outside D1-117 and glanced inside.
“This dude is f----- up, bleeding,” Rogers told Beaudry, according to Holmes.
Beaudry, a six-year veteran, shrugged it off, according to more than two dozen inmates in their sworn, taped interviews reviewed by the Herald. [...]
At that point, witnesses said, Rogers climbed onto his top bunk and, 10 or 11 times, jumped on Martin’s head.
Pat Franklin, a retired cop who is a private investigator specializing in probing police internal affairs read the inspector general's report. He told the
Herald: “What did this guy do to belong in that cell with this animal? He was a nonviolent offender. ... The big question is: Was Rogers the only one who intended for this to happen?”
Yes, a very big question. Especially in light of the fact that one officer, a captain and a lieutenant who had been on duty the night Martin was murdered were all later promoted, along with the warden, Randy Tifft.
There are many more details in Brown's story, so I urge you, if you have the stomach for it, to read the whole thing.