Guards beat and waterboard prisoners in New York, lawsuits show

Two inmates in upstate New York say they were brutally beaten by guards and taken to another facility to be waterboarded — a torture method once used by CIA interrogators on terrorism suspects, according to newly filed lawsuits.

Waterboarding gives victims the feeling of drowning. The events cited by the men in the lawsuits took place on October 7 at the Great Meadow Correctional Facility, a maximum security prison in Comstock, NY, more than 200 miles north of New York City.

One man, Charles Wright, 44, was taken to a room and forced to lie face up while chained to a bed, his lawsuit said. A guard placed a dirty cloth over his nose and mouth and poured water over it for 45 seconds; another guard stood by, the suit says.

The second man, Eugene Taylor, 32, was taken to a room where a guard – apparently the same one who put a cloth over Mr Wright’s mouth – placed a cloth around Mr Taylor’s face and repeatedly dunked his head in water while other guards stood around it, according to Mr. Taylor’s suit.

The men had been taken from the Green Haven Correctional Facility in Stormville, New York, to Great Meadow, where dozens of other inmates were subjected to physical and psychological abuse during a weeklong lockdown and search in early October, according to a separate lawsuit by 44 inmates.

Corrections officers, including special teams from other prisons, gathered in the cells, punching and kicking inmates, slamming their faces into walls and twiddling their fingers, the lawsuit said, adding that the search was sparked by an inmate’s attack on a guard.

The lawsuits, recently filed in the state Court of Claims, come nearly a year after 26 inmates at Sing Sing Correctional Facility in Ossining, N.Y., also filed suit, alleging officers there orchestrated abuse during a search of the entire institution in November 2022.

Bruce Barket, an attorney whose firm filed the Sing Sing lawsuit a year ago, said at the time that his firm had reported the allegations to the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of New York, which he said was investigating with the FBI, which interviewed several people. of his company’s customers. He said the company was cooperating with the federal investigation.

“Given that the Department of Corrections administration apparently approved the brutality, it should come as no surprise that some guards escalated the abuse,” said Mr. Barket, whose firm also filed the lawsuits against Green Haven and Great Meadow tightened.

The U.S. attorney’s office declined to comment.

Danielle Muscatello, one of the firm’s lawyers, said that when she interviewed Mr. Wright by phone last fall, he did not use the term waterboarding but described what had happened.

“It’s unbelievable that this would happen in our country, let alone New York State,” Ms. Muscatello said.

Thomas Mailey, a spokesman for the state Department of Corrections and Community Supervision, which runs the prisons, said the department has not seen the lawsuits and in any case “does not comment on potential or pending litigation.”

While allegations of cruelty in New York State prisons are not unusual, the allegation of waterboarding is.

Christopher Dunn, legal director of the New York Civil Liberties Union, said his office has received many letters from inmates, which are being read and followed carefully.

“While any atrocity is possible when it comes to New York prisons,” Mr. Dunn said, “we have received no reports of waterboarding.”

Matthew Raymond, an inmate at Auburn Correctional Facility, said in a federal lawsuit that in 2016 he was placed in handcuffs on a table, and a lieutenant held his head by his hair, pulled his shirt over his face and slowly poured water over his nose gutter. and mouth. “He felt like he was drowning and couldn’t catch his breath,” the lawsuit said.

The lieutenant denied the allegations and the lawsuit is pending, said Katie Rosenfeld, one of Mr. Raymond’s attorneys.

The waterboarding described by Mr. Wright and Mr. Taylor, both serving sentences for manslaughter, followed a lockdown in Green Haven and the deployment of special teams of officers, according to their lawsuits.

The state has 21 Corrections Emergency Response Teams, known as CERTs, which are based in correctional facilities and are used, among other things, to conduct searches.

In Green Haven, Mr. Wright’s lawsuit says, officers went to cells and beat select inmates. Officers instructed Mr. Wright to remove his underwear and slippers, place his hands behind his head and turn around. After he complied, an officer struck him in the back of the head, causing him to fall to the ground, the suit said. Officers sprayed pepper spray into his mouth and slammed his head into the floor and a toilet, the lawsuit said.

Mr. Wright’s lawsuit does not identify the guard he accuses of waterboarding him at Great Meadow, but describes him as white with a trimmed beard and mohawk haircut — similar to the description Mr. Taylor gives in his suit.

Mr. Taylor recalled in his lawsuit that after he was taken to Great Meadow, he saw five or six other Green Haven inmates, some of them crying.

Alain Delaqueriere research contributed.