HATTIESBURG -- A federal judge released jurors for the weekend after an intense day of testimony ending with a detailed account of the fatal, jailhouse beating of inmate Jessie Lee Williams Jr.
The last to take the witness stand today in the criminal civil- rights case was former Harrison County booking officer Regina Lynn Rhodes, a witness for the prosecution. Rhodes, 30, was the first of eight former jailers to enter plea bargains with the government after an investigation prompted by Williams' death.
Rhodes said Williams tried to choke her supervisor at one point in the beating, but claimed that Williams was no threat to anyone when the assault began and throughout the incident, with exception of the choking attempt. Rhodes said she and Ryan Michael Teel, officer in charge, bickered with Williams before the commotion began. Rhodes admitted to the punches she threw, but told of numerous strikes by Teel.
Rhodes' testimony accompanied the playing of a videotape from a different camera angle, revealing new information backed up by Rhodes' first-hand account of Williams' assault on Feb. 4, 2006. Teel is on trial along with their former boss, then-Capt. James Ricky "Rick" Gaston.
While several former jailers who witnessed the Williams beating have now testified to what they saw, Rhodes is the first jailer involved in that incident to bring every detail into focus, including a new detail the Williams' family had not heard. The different camera angle makes it appear that Williams didn't lunge at Teel after Teel landed a swift kick to Williams' chest or stomach area. Instead, it appears that Williams fell over, Teel grabbed him and they began to tussle.
Rhodes described how Williams was repeatedly kicked, punched, stunned by a Taser, hog-tied, wrapped in a restraint blanket and further incapacitated by a spit mask doused with pepper spray and placed over his face. After Williams was strapped to the restraint chair, Teel "kneed him in the groin" and choked him with a leather strap placed across his neck, Rhodes said.
After the Taser was used, Rhodes said, Teel pulled the fish-hook-shaped prongs out of Williams' flesh and jabbed them back into his skin.
Several of Williams' relatives began to weep.
In other testimony this afternoon, Sheriff's Department patrol officer William Correa said he witnessed part of the Williams incident, leaving an inner office to watch parts of the commotion while doing paperwork.
Read more about this story in Saturday's editions of the Sun Herald.
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