With federal charges filed, there’s a chance for justice in teen’s detention-center death
A federal grand jury on Monday indicted a detention officer at the Miami-Dade juvenile lockup, whose actions led to the shameful death of a teen detainee.
The indictment charges officer Antwan Johnson with one count of conspiracy and one count of violating the civil rights of 17-year-old Elord Revolte, who died on Aug. 31, 2015, following a savage beating by fellow detainees, a beating ordered up by Johnson at the Miami-Dade Regional Juvenile Detention Center, according to the indictment. And all for sweet treats and privileges.
The “bounty practice” was the focus of the Miami Herald’s investigative project called Fight Club, published in October and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. The indictment says that Johnson used “coded language, including nods,” to signal that he wanted the juveniles to attack Revolte. Apparently, Johnson wanted to keep his own hands clean.
Kudos to Miami federal prosecutors, led by U.S. Attorney Benjamin Greenberg, for attempting to right a wrong. A report by the Miami-Dade State Attorney’s Office found that it was “likely” that the detention officer created the atmosphere that led to the teen’s death. In December, Miami State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle was right to seek a grand jury to do a deeper dive in Florida’s juvenile justice system.
But Johnson joins a list of prison guards against whom the SAO said it could not file charges. The feds can charge for a violation of civil rights, ensuring that, at the least, this heinous case gets a fuller public airing, guilty verdict or no. “No charges” shouldn’t be the end of the story.
The indictment in Revolte’s death comes at a time when deaths of in Florida’s prisons have been steadily growing into an epidemic. In less than six months, at least 145 inmates have died, a stunning number even for a state with one of the highest rates of inmate mortality in the nation.
Current projections of inmate mortality suggest the death rate in 2018 could rise 29 percent from the total in 2017, the deadliest year on record by a large margin, the Miami Herald has reported.
Is that a record that the state really wants to achieve by the end of the year? Corrections Secretary Julie Jones said in a statement that the department takes the allegations in the one of the latest deaths, that of Timothy Thomas — isolated and under guards’ watch — “very seriously.”
But the Department of Corrections spins out a litany of possible reasons for the increase in inmate deaths: an aging population, an epidemic of drug overdoses, an unhealthier population entering the system due to the rise in opioid addiction. All legit, but given the level of violence, the list is incomplete, and DOC is in denial.
The numbers suggest that the kind of culture change necessary since the scalding death of Darren Rainey in 2012 is not on track — especially when guards’ pay is low and KKK members are on the state payroll, gainfully employed in prisons and able to sow racist violence there.
Regardless, the state of Florida needs to get to the bottom of why a prison sentence too often turns into a death sentence for inmates. Florida’s taxpayers should not be paying murderers’ salaries.
Special election
In Tuesday’s special election in Florida House District 114, the Miami Herald recommends Democrat Javier Fernandez.
This story was originally published April 30, 2018 at 9:54 PM with the headline "With federal charges filed, there’s a chance for justice in teen’s detention-center death."