A state prison inmate who filed a handwritten lawsuit accusing four Arkansas Department of Correction officers of violating his civil rights during a 2011 "beat-down" won a jury verdict against two of the guards on Thursday.
A 10-woman, two-man jury spent about five hours deliberating Thursday, the fourth day of a trial in the Little Rock courtroom of U.S. District Judge D. Price Marshall Jr., before finding that correction officers Sgts. James Hill and Lantz Goforth violated prisoner Keith Moore's civil rights on Nov. 5, 2011.
The jury found that Hill, who has been with the department since 2001, used excessive force in restraining Moore, and ordered him to pay Moore $500 in compensatory damages and $1,000 in punitive damages. The panel found that Goforth, an employee since 2007, failed to protect Moore during the incident at the Grimes Unit in Newport, and ordered him to pay Moore $250 in compensatory damages and $500 in punitive damages.
The guards were found liable in their individual capacities, which means they, rather than the department, must pay the judgments.
Moore, 26, is serving a 20-year sentence for a 2009 attempted first-degree murder conviction in Dallas County. He also has a 2005 robbery conviction from Dallas County.
In a handwritten lawsuit he filed in 2012, he alleged that Hill, Goforth and two other guards intentionally provoked him to hit one of them, to justify beating him up, while transferring him about 11:15 p.m. from an open barracks to solitary confinement. He said Hill kicked him in the left eye, damaging his perfect 20/20 vision, which an optometrist testified is now measured at 20/200, which is significant enough to prevent him from passing a driver's test without prescription eyeglasses.
The jury cleared the other two guards named in the suit -- Sgt. Richard Lee and Cpl. Charles Poole.
Little Rock attorney David Hargis, whom Marshall appointed to represent Moore on a pro bono basis, said Moore won the first part of the lawsuit on his own by successfully arguing that the guards weren't entitled to immunity.
"He's a bright guy," Hargis said. "Finally, a little win in his life."
Moore won't be eligible for parole until 2018.
Shea Wilson, spokesman for the department, said later Thursday that both guards are still employed by the department and that no disciplinary action has been taken against them to date.
The department was represented at trial by Assistant Attorneys General Hester Criswell and Joe Cordi Sr.
Metro on 08/22/2014