Black Inmate Killed In Most Brutal Way Possible: County Rules It Accidental

Florida inmate Darren Rainey dies in locked, scalding-hot shower: Investigators clear him of wrong doing.

In June 2012, Darren Rainey, a 50-year old schizophrenic inmate serving two years for a non-violent drug charge at Dade Correctional Facility south of Miami, died after being locked in a scalding hot shower by prison guards for nearly two hours. After years awaiting an autopsy report, a Miami Dade medical examiner ruled the death accidental despite the overwhelming evidence suggesting otherwise.

Rainey old had one month left before completing his two-year prison sentence before, according to several other inmates, Rainey was locked in the scalding hot shower while pleading in pain to be let out. The shower, which is temperature controlled outside of its cubicle, is allegedly used a torture device by prison guards to discipline unruly inmates, according to inmate accounts. Prison videos show Rainey was put in the shower at 7:38 pm, and was pronounced dead by 9:30 pm the evening of the incident. Inmate Mark Joiner told the  he was ordered to clean up the chunks of Rainey’s skin left behind in the shower.

The American Civil Liberties Union is pushing for a federal investigation into the case and Florida’s prison service in general, which was scrutinized several months ago after evidence surfaced of Florida prison guards pitting youth inmates to fight each other for their entertainment. The Florida Prison System also fired 32 guards in September 2015 in response to the many inmate deaths and allegations of abuse in the past few years. Despite the firings, corruption, abuse, and cover ups still remain rampant in the Florida prison system, as the case of Darren Rainey can attest to.

“There needs to be an independent assessment,”said Howard Simon, Executive Director of the Florida chapter of the ACLU in an interview with the Guardian.  “The final autopsy by the medical examiner needs to be released and subjected to an independent assessment, and ultimately you need the federal government in here to analyse what went wrong. The key word is ‘independent’. The system here is that there’s too much of a history of protecting their own. It may be that there was a homicide here.”

Rainey’s death initially led to an investigation into Dade Correctional Facility, resulting in the warden, Jerry Cummins, being fired in 2014 along with two other officers who were on duty at the time of the Rainey’s death. Since then, no reforms have been made, and now, following the autopsy report, the Miami-Dade State Attorney office will decide to pursue criminal charges against the prison guards involved in the incident.

Shaun King wrote in a New York Daily News article:

“The bottom line is Rainey was a throwaway person in Florida […] Black, mentally ill, drug addicted, and a converted Muslim, his life simply did not matter enough to the system to treat him with any semblance of compassion or dignity. He was tortured and killed and now the same system that killed him has basically cleared itself of all wrongdoing.”

Featured photo with Darren Rainey: Miami Dept. Corrections via Wikipedia.

The post Black Inmate Killed In Most Brutal Way Possible: County Rules It Accidental appeared first on .