Opinion ID: 167150
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 1

Heading: The Howard Lane Assault

Text: 7 Testimony at trial demonstrated that Howard Lane, a USP-Florence prisoner, wrote several letters containing sexually explicit remarks to a female USP-Florence officer. After the discovery of the letters, Mr. Verbickas escorted Mr. Lane to Captain Hines's office, where the Captain told Mr. Verbickas and Mr. Britt to take this piece of shit down to SHU and give him a treatment. Mr. Verbickas and Mr. Britt applied restraints to Mr. Lane's wrists and took him to the SHU. As he was led to the SHU, Mr. Lane threatened the officers and struggled against the restraints. When the trio arrived at the SHU, Ms. Gutierrez opened a cell door as the other officers escorted Mr. Lane inside. Mr. Britt returned to the officers' station. 8 Ms. Gutierrez testified that she saw Mr. Verbickas punch Mr. Lane while he was standing against the wall of the cell, his hands still restrained behind his back. She further stated that Mr. Verbickas then placed him on the floor and that she kicked him in the ribs so as to avoid leaving visible injuries and the concomitant need to file an incident report. Mr. Verbickas then grabbed Mr. Lane by his collar and the seat of his pants, lifted him waist high, and dropped him on his face. Blood oozed from Mr. Lane's lip. Finally, Mr. Verbickas threw Mr. Lane up against the wall, leaving a blood stain. 9 Because Mr. Lane suffered visible facial injuries as a result of the beating, the officers discussed how they would falsify their incident reports to avoid an investigation. The reports ultimately filed with USP-Florence stated that Mr. Lane kicked both Mr. Verbickas and Ms. Gutierrez, and Mr. Lane threw himself up against the wall. To support this version of events, Ms. Gutierrez testified that she inflicted an injury on herself.