Opinion ID: 1090851
Heading Depth: 1
Heading Rank: 4

Heading: Russell's New Version of the Death of Officer Cotton

Text: ¶ 16. Russell has presented a new version facts surrounding Officer Cotton's death. According to Russell, Unit 24-B, where he was housed in Parchman in 1989, was a violent and dangerous place controlled largely by gangs and corrupt prison guards. The most powerful gang, and the one most important to Russell's story, were the GDs, led by an inmate named Eric Schoolboy Jones. Russell did not like gangs and did not belong to one. Russell stopped a GD attack on Theatry Branch, an inmate, one day in the yard at Parchman. For this reason the GDs planned vengeance against Russell rather than lose face in the prison population. The primary GD enforcer was an inmate named Ronald Pope. The GDs began to send threats to Russell orally and by letter and note. The GDs finally authorized the killing of Russell. The GDs tried to attack Russell during Russell's trip to the law library on July 17, 1989, but Russell refused to go and was disciplined by MDOC. Russell sought help from the prison authorities because of these threats but the MDOC authorities ignored Russell. ¶ 17. The GDs planned to kill Russell with the help of Officer Cotton, a corrupt officer who conspired and cooperated with inmates, including gang members and especially the GDs, to smuggle drugs and transfer counterfeit money orders for a percentage of the profit. Officer Cotton also would allow one inmate to attack another in exchange for money. Officer Cotton was carrying a knife on the day of his death in violation of MDOC rules. Officer Cotton was friendly with the GDs and with Smith, the inmate floorwalker at the time of Officer Cotton's stabbing. In return for money, Officer Cotton was going to take Russell out of his cell, handcuff him and leave him in a utility room where the GDs could kill him. Russell got his knife, or shank, long before July 18, 1989. He got the knife not to kill Officer Cotton, but to defend himself in the violent world of Parchman and specifically Unit 24-B. Russell never meant to kill Officer Cotton but only wanted to scare him with the shank, or injure him so that Russell would be transferred to another unit away from the gangs. ¶ 18. Officer Cotton was the aggressor in the confrontation, hitting Russell first in the face with a meal tray. He also hit Russell with a set of keys. Russell did not intend to kill Officer Cotton as he stabbed Officer Cotton once and then stepped back, and did nothing further until Officer Cotton started hitting Russell with the meal trays. Once he was stabbed, Officer Cotton ran upstairs toward Zone 4, which housed numerous GDs, instead of toward safety in the guard's control tower, where Officer Lee was stationed. ¶ 19. Once Officer Cotton reached the safety of the control tower, after he had been stabbed twice, he still tried to cover up his involvement in the attempted killing of Russell. He called a Sergeant Clark, another corrupt MDOC officer, and said he was having trouble with Russell. Officer Cotton did not call the emergency number used at Parchman at this time. Officer Cotton delayed in calling until he realized the seriousness of his injuries. ¶ 20. Officer Lee was in the control tower at the time of the stabbing. Officer Lee left the tower once he saw the stabbing, hit Russell with his nightstick, which broke it off, and then ran back into the tower. Russell states that Officer Lee was much less heroic in reality than in the version of events that Officer Lee gave as a witness at trial. ¶ 21. After the stabbing of Officer Cotton, Russell and other inmates were beaten by MDOC officers in an attempt to intimidate them. Inmates were told not to tell investigators what had really happened. Smith, one of the State's witnesses against Russell at his 1990 trial, was a particular target. ¶ 22. The MDOC covered up the truth of what happened here because it feared civil liability on two fronts, one from Officer Cotton's family for the delay in getting him to the hospital, and from Russell for failure to protect him from gang violence. First, Russell states that he should not have been let out of his cell earlier on the date of the stabbing. Officer Cotton let inmates out of their cells based on his wishes and not on Parchman rules. Officer Lee was derelict in not monitoring the actions in the unit at the time of the stabbing. ¶ 23. The stabbing of Officer Cotton probably happened much earlier than reported in the official version of events. Officer Cotton was probably stabbed around 4:50 p.m. instead of 6:50 p.m. MDOC altered numerous reports in order to shield itself from liability for not getting Officer Cotton to a hospital in a timely fashion. The stabbing occurred during the feeding of the inmates, and the late meal at Parchman is served much earlier than in the outside world, so 4:50 is a more likely time than 6:50. There was a delay in getting an ambulance for Officer Cotton because he did not tell everyone he was stabbed when the other MDOC officers arrived at the control tower. The MDOC Hospital at Parchman was inadequate to deal with the stabbing, and Officer Cotton never should have been taken there before being taken to the Bolivar County Hospital. ¶ 24. The MDOC sought to cover up facts relating to Officer Cotton's death. No autopsy was performed. His wounds were not necessarily fatal, but were rendered so by the delay in getting him to the hospital. Another result of the failure to perform an autopsy was the failure to detect any substances, such as drugs or alcohol, which might have been in Officer Cotton's blood. ¶ 25. The MDOC or the prosecution failed to turn over exculpatory evidence during discovery including statements or interviews or questionnaire forms filled out by inmates, re-wrote some interviews and did not preserve original notes, failed to turn over an interview of Officer Lee, and failed to interview or note the important role of GD enforcer Ronald Pope in this matter. ¶ 26. The chain of custody of the physical evidence in this case was non-existent. The shank allegedly used to stab Officer Cotton was not tested for blood or fingerprints. The prisoner jump suit worn by Russell during the stabbing was not introduced into evidence. ¶ 27. Internal Affairs put pressure on MDOC staff to re-write its reports to make them consistent. Administrative documents such as logs and registers were also doctored.