HATTIESBURG -- Graphic testimony in the trial of two former Harrison County jailers Tuesday matched a federal prosecutor's description of a "culture of violence" among officers who "sullied their badges by bad decisions," making the abuse of inmates a sport.
Jurors in the trial of James Ricky "Rick" Gaston and Ryan Michael Teel appeared overwhelmed by claims and evidence including a picture of an injured inmate and surveillance recordings of a female inmate's assault. In testimony punctuated by objections from defense attorneys, former jailer William Jeffery Priest identified Teel and Gaston as ringleaders of a rogue pack that encouraged beating inmates, joked about it and taught others how to strike an inmate without leaving a visible mark.
Priest told jurors of several abused inmates, including Only Al-Khidir, whose booking mug shows a bloody face and hair askew. Former jailer Morgan Thompson told Priest he beat the man in the shower room, where no surveillance cameras are present, according to Priest.
Numerous jailers and deputies were shown the picture on a jail computer and half a dozen copies were posted around the jail, "almost as a joke," Priest said. Gaston was present that day and made no efforts to stop the show-and-tell, according to Priest. Former jailer Timothy Moore, who quit after the incident, has admitted he falsified a report on the incident at the request of Gaston and an unidentified co-conspirator. The jail docket shows Al-Khidir was booked in the night of Oct. 4, 2005.
Jurors also heard from two former Baldwin County, Ala., corrections officers who said they were prepared to bust out of the Harrison County jail gate to escape with a prisoner assaulted by Gaston, then a captain at the jail, on Oct. 10, 2003. The officers said they had orders to move a Harrison County jail inmate to their jail. One, a senior officer, said he ordered his companion to pepper spray Gaston and was trying to retrieve his gun, which he left in their van, when they were able to fend him off.
Testimony resumes today at 9 a.m. before U.S. District Judge Louis Guirola Jr.
Federal trial attorney Lisa Krigsten, in opening statements Tuesday, described Gaston as "priding himself in ruthlessly abusing inmates who angered him. He led the charge."
Teel, she said, "set the tone for the rest of the officers, encouraging a culture of abuse. He abused for sport."
Krigsten told jurors the case isn't about the fatal beating of inmate Jessie Lee Williams Jr., an inmate who died after an assault in the jail booking room on Feb. 4, 2006.
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