Jury convicts Oklahoma corrections officer for 'facilitating white supremacist assault on Black inmates'
Matthew Ware, a former Kay County Oklahoma supervisory corrections officer, has been convicted of facilitating what the United States Department of Justice describes as a "white supremacist assault" on Black inmates.
Specifically, the jury found the 53-year-old Ware guilty of "willfully depriving two pretrial detainees of their right to be free from a corrections officer’s deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm and of willfully depriving a third pretrial detainee of the right to be free from a corrections officer’s use of excessive force."
According to the DOJ, Ware ordered two Black inmates, D’Angelo Wilson and Marcus Miller, moved to a location in the prison that he knew housed white supremacists who would target them for violence.
He then ordered his underlings to unlock the cells of all the inmates in the area at the same time, which allowed the white supremacists to viciously beat Wilson and Miller.
Ware also got more directly involved in another prisoner's mistreatment, the DOJ explained.
"While Ware served as the Acting Captain of the KCDC, he ordered lower-ranking corrections officer to restrain another pretrial detainee, Christopher Davis, in a stretched-out position — with Davis’ left wrist restrained to the far-left side of the bench and his right wrist restrained to the far-right side of the bench — in retaliation for Davis sending Ware a note that criticized how Ware ran the KCDC," the DOJ says. "Davis was left restrained in this position for 90 minutes, resulting in physical injury."
Ware now faces a maximum sentence of ten years in jail.
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