Officer punctured inmate’s lung during beating and locked him alone in cell, feds say
A Tennessee corrections officer escorted a handcuffed inmate to a holding cell and beat him for nearly two minutes, leaving him alone with broken ribs, a punctured lung and in need of surgery, federal prosecutors said.
Four years later, the former supervisory officer is going to prison, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Middle District of Tennessee.
Kenan Lister, who worked as a prison security threat group coordinator, repeatedly kicked, punched and hit the inmate, striking his head, chest and torso, while the man “was on the ground and not resisting” at Trousdale Turner Correctional Facility in Hartsville in August 2019, prosecutors said.
Lister, a former football player who weighed 265 pounds at the time, “took multiple breaks during his beating to make sure no one was watching” and then locked the inmate alone in the cell, prosecutors wrote in a sentencing memorandum.
The inmate, whose lung was punctured in the attack, “struggled to breath for hours” until another officer found him and “got him life-saving medical treatment,” the sentencing memo says.
The violent beating came about 20 minutes after the inmate was accused of stabbing and sexually assaulting a female worker at the prison — an attack Lister directly responded to, according to the sentencing memo.
Despite the prison warden’s warnings to Lister — advising him not to retaliate against the inmate and to make sure no other officer did — Lister didn’t listen, prosecutors said.
A judge sentenced Lister to two years in prison on Nov. 1 in connection with the beating, the attorney’s office announced in a news release.
McClatchy News contacted Lister’s defense attorneys for comment on Nov. 2 and didn’t receive an immediate response.
“Correctional officers who abuse the people in their custody not only violate the Constitution, but also erode public trust in the criminal justice system,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke, of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division, said in a statement.
Lister “deliberately ignored (the inmate’s) obvious medical needs resulting from the assault,” Clarke added.
Lister’s sentencing comes after he pleaded guilty in April 2022 to one count of deprivation of rights under color of law for and one count of being deliberately indifferent to the same inmate’s medical needs, prosecutors said.
He’s accused of filing a false report in which he made no mention of the inmate’s beating, according to prosecutors.
After the correctional facility fired Lister, he was briefly hired at a different prison before the facility learned he left the incident of the inmate’s beating off his job application, the sentencing memo says.
Ahead of Lister’s sentencing, prosecutors said the “provocation for the defendant’s assault was significant” and “warrants a sentence at the low end” in the sentencing memo.
They ultimately requested the court to sentence Lister to 4 years and 3 months in prison before the judge issued the 2-year sentence, according to the sentencing memo.
The inmate, who was only identified by his initials, was recently sentenced to 10 years in prison related to the attack on the female prison employee in August 2019, the sentencing memo says.
Hartsville is about 50 miles northeast of Nashville.
This story was originally published November 2, 2023 at 9:17 AM with the headline "Officer punctured inmate’s lung during beating and locked him alone in cell, feds say."
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