Inmates Allege Hot Sauce Abuse By Prison Guards

DECEMBER 4--In the wake of prisoner claims of mistreatment and humiliation at the hands of guards, a North Carolina warden has been suspended while state officials investigate the troubling allegations.

Lafayette Hall, who runs the Sampson Correctional Institution, has been placed on paid administrative leave while the State Bureau of Investigation probes the prisoner accusations, which are contained in a “To whom it may concern” letter sent several months ago to a federal magistrate judge in Greensboro. A second corrections worker has been reassigned.

The July 23 letter carries the name of six inmates at Sampson, a medium security facility. The missive carried the return address of Gary Parker, a 34-year-old habitual felon who is serving a 105-month sentence (and is due for release in August 2015). The inmate letter sought help in finding a lawyer to help file a class action lawsuit against the state prison system.

According to the inmates, jail guards forced them to ingest spoonfuls of “Exotic Hot Sauce” in return for getting 70-cents/hour work assignments. “While we are at work the officers forces us to do racist, homosexual, humiliating, and demorilizing acts to ourself and each other for payoffs such as cigarettes, food, drinks, and beer,” the letter claims.

The inmates accused jailers of forcing them to “pull their pants down so the officers can watch them rub hot sauce on their rectums and testicals wich leave them blisstered and raw for days.” They also alleged that the corrections officers made them simulate sex acts and forced three white inmates to “force a Black man down, grab his testicals, and make him scream and swear that ‘He is white and proud of it.’”

While on a road work crew, the inmates claimed, they were forced to “catch deadly snakes and kiss them on the mouths” and “catch rabbits and mice to throw in front of oncomeing cars so they can be run over and killed.”

The six inmates, who remain at Sampson, wrote that they were “working with these officers” and were “afraid of some kind of retaliation...when this all comes out.”

Pictured in the above mug shots (clockwise from upper left) are inmates Parker; Thomas Patten, 25; Cedric Williams, 22; Phillip Jarman, 27; Donnie Ivey, 52; and Jamey Dowless, 36. (2 pages)