U.S. Department of Justice announced the launch of separate civil probes into the conditions of two South Carolina-based jails.
“The department received credible allegations that incarcerated persons have died from use of force, gross medical neglect or suicide in the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center,” the DOJ said in a statement on Thursday. “The department also received credible allegations that the Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center is structurally unsafe and that there have been sexual assaults, homicides and prevalent violence resulting in serious injuries.”
The DOJ will examine medical and mental health care, use of isolation and use of force at the Sheriff Al Cannon Detention Center. Investigators would also determine whether the Charleston County Sheriff’s Office discriminates against people with disabilities.
The announcement comes after attorneys for the family of 27-year-old Lason Butler, a man who died at Alvin S. Glenn Detention Center in Columbia, South Carolina, sent a request to the department’s civil rights division earlier this year. DOJ plans to examine living conditions and whether the detention center fails to protect incarcerated people from violence.
The letter outlined Butler’s experience before his February 2022 death and the alleged unsanitary conditions inside the facility. When he was taken into custody, initially unbeknownst to his family, the jail noted that Butler was acting “erratic” but “cooperative,” and he was moved into a special housing unit. Butler had been arrested for traffic violations that included reckless driving, failure to stop for a blue light and driving with a suspended license.
According to the letter, it was noted that he was seen playing with feces and lying down naked and unresponsive in his cell to the point where he “could not hold his head up.” During this time, his family repeatedly attempted to see him.
At one point, he was placed on suicide watch because he was not eating and moved to another cell for closer supervision. Per the letter, Butler was so sick jail staff had to carry him to the new cell on a stretcher. During transport, he fell down the stairs “and did not move at all.”
After nearly two weeks in the facility, according to the letter, the toilet in his original cell had not been flushed, and torn paper containers were tossed throughout the area. Fellow inmates said that his cell did not have running water and that he could be heard at night wanting help from the rats.
Medical staff raised the alarm about his condition, requesting that he needed outside treatment, but was given a hard time by correction officers, with one insinuating that Butler was ”faking it.” He died in his cell on Feb. 12, with his body allegedly covered in rat bites. It was determined that he died as a result of dehydration and that he “lost 15% of his body weight” while locked up, the letter said. The local coroner ruled his death as a homicide, citing a “lack of support” from jail employees.
Butler’s family filed a federal lawsuit against Richmond County, where the jail is located, and a half-a-dozen staffers, WLTX reported. It reportedly claims that they didn’t “provide sanitary conditions, access to health care, and relief from solitary confinement was unreasonable, was done intentionally, willfully, maliciously, and with deliberate indifference and/or reckless disregard for [Butler’s] basic human needs, and caused death.”
Horrific video posted online by inmates exposed the living conditions, highlighting that the toilets, sinks and lights didn’t work in their cells.
In a statement, Butler’s attorneys championed the DOJ’s investigation into the facility, calling it a “death trap.”
“This investigation is about more than any single incident or the four walls of Alvin S Glenn. It’s about holding the powerful accountable when they treat citizens like they’re less than human. It’s about justice,” attorneys from the Strom Law Firm said.
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