Miami filmmaker’s video rips state attorney over inmate death probe. He backs her foe.

Miami filmmaker Billy Corben, also a prodigious producer of pointed political opinions on social media, on Tuesday released a brief video attacking one of his most frequent targets: long-standing State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle, who is up for reelection in August.

In specific, the graphic two-minute video — posted on Twitter, a favorite forum for Corben — rips Fernandez Rundle for declining to pursue criminal charges in the death of Darren Rainey, a Black mentally ill inmate who died in a hot prison shower at the Dade Correctional Institution in June 2012.

Released on the anniversary of Rainey’s death, the video comes as some Black Lives Matter protesters have focused on Fernandez Rundle’s record of prosecuting law enforcement officers. Corben, whose documentaries such as “Cocaine Cowboys” and “Screwball” have been praised by critics, also promoted the clip with a tweet urging his 77,000 followers to vote for challenger Melba Pearson, a former prosecutor in Fernandez Rundle’s office running on a platform of criminal-justice reform.

The video includes gruesome photos of Rainey’s body after his death, alleging he was scalded to death. “He was boiled to death,” Corben narrates. “Katherine Fernandez Rundle covered up his murder.”

In response, Fernandez Rundle’s campaign spokesman called Rainey’s death “really heartbreaking” but insisted that a medical examiner’s ruling made it impossible to charge anyone. “The office needs the evidence to hold individuals accountable,” the campaign said in a statement.

The most immediate ripple effect was less about the Rainey case and more about campaign finance law.

On Tuesday, the state attorney’s campaign questioned whether the video violated election rules. It does not contain any language indicating it was made on the behalf of Pearson or any political action committee.

“It’s rich in irony though that Mr. Corben is now engaged in political communication activity that breaks the law as its in clear violation of campaign finance statutes,” the statement said. “The social media post with the digital ad is clearly an expenditure and Florida law requires a political committee to be formed.”

Corben said he had created what he called a “mini doc” on a volunteer basis, not as part of Pearson’s campaign.

“It’s an outrageous abuse of power for our county’s top cop to threaten me for exercising my constitutionally protected speech because I criticized her,” Corben said. “But it’s consistent with the 27 years of injustice our community has endured in her time as state attorney and it’s not going to intimidate me. In fact, I may post another video next week.”

Corben’s attorney noted that Florida’s election law does not require a political-ad disclaimer if “placed at no cost on an Internet website for which there is no cost to post content for public users.”

Pearson on Tuesday said the video was accurate but that “I had nothing to do with the video.”

Rainey’s death was first reported by the Miami Herald in 2014, and was part of a series that led to sweeping reforms in the Florida prison system. But it never resulted in criminal charges against any correction officers, a decision that critics of Fernandez Rundle have questioned since.

In 27 years as state attorney, her office has never charged any officers for on-duty fatal shootings. She’s long explained that by arguing that Florida law gives so much latitude for officers to use deadly force that hardly any officers have been prosecuted statewide over the decades for firing their weapons.

Although Rainey’s case did not involve a police firearm, he died in corrections custody — and the case has surfaced often during the campaign. At one recent rally, protesters outside her office chanted Rainey’s name while calling for her ouster.

The investigation in Rainey’s death took five years. Fernandez Rundle’s office eventually declined to press charges against prison officers, saying that the medical examiner’s conclusion that Rainey suffered no burns “refutes any possible claim that he was either intentionally or unintentionally exposed to excessively hot water.”

Pearson and Corben have long singled out the State Attorney’s handling of the Rainey’s death.

Rainey, who suffered from schizophrenia, collapsed on June 23, 2012, after he was placed into a hot shower that had been specially rigged to allow officers to control the flow of water from an adjacent janitor’s closet. Inmates told the Miami Herald that he’d been placed there as punishment, and was screaming that the shower was too hot.

The investigation into his death languished for a couple years until the Miami Herald first reported on his death in August 2014.

Miami-Dade Medical Examiner Dr. Emma Lew ruled that there was no evidence the shower was so scalding that the water burned his skin. She ruled the death was accidental, coming from complications of schizophrenia, heart disease and “confinement” in the shower.

Lew also ruled that skin peeling seen on his body was not from burns but from “skin slippage” — basically, his skin peeled off as he was being treated and moved, after he had been laying in a “humid environment with water and moisture acting to soften and loosen skin.” She noted Rainey suffered no burns on his feet, which would have happened had he been standing in scalding water.

Her determination, however, was questioned by several outside pathologists, including Dr. Werner Spitz, who was hired by the Rainey family as part of a civil lawsuit. Two independent medical examiners, viewing the autopsy photos at the request of the Miami Herald, said they believed Rainey suffered burns.

Rainey’s family eventually settled a civil lawsuit with the state of Florida.

Corben, in his video, disputed the medical examiner’s claim, saying officers blasted him with water that was 160 degrees. “Until his flesh melted off the bone,” Corben says in the video, echoing one of the experts interviewed by the Herald. “Darren was found with second- and third-degree burns over 30 percent of his body.”

Pearson, in an interview on Tuesday, said were she state attorney, she would have charged the case as a manslaughter, even with Lew’s testimony that the inmate did not suffer burns.

“She says there were no burns, but at the end of the day, you put in the fire-rescue crews who were first to respond and were clearly like, ‘These were burns,’ Pearson said, adding: “If [Rainey] had a preexisting condition exacerbated by being left in the shower for two hours ... no matter how you cut it, he shouldn’t have been in the shower for two hours.”

It’s not Corben’s first effort at self-produced videos targeting politicians.

In 2018, when Rick Scott was running for U.S. Senate, Corben released a 68-second video criticizing the Republican governor’s oversight of a Hollywood nursing home where a dozen patients died in 2017 after Hurricane Irma knocked out the power. Employees called Scott’s cellphone — which the governor had passed out to nursing homes before the storm — several times. Scott’s office deleted the audio of the calls after transcribing them.

This article initially misstated the timing of the election for Miami-Dade state attorney. The election will be held Aug. 18.

This story was originally published June 23, 2020 at 7:26 PM.