Cuyahoga Corrections Officers Guilty Of Hitting Restrained Inmate

CLEVELAND — Two Cuyahoga County corrections officers pleaded guilty to using excessive force on an inmate, Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost announced. The inmate suffered a concussion as a result of the incident.

Timothy Dugan pleaded guilty to charges of abduction and assault, and Nicholas Evans pleaded guilty to attempted felonious assault and tampering with evidence. Both men were indicted in April.

Dugan and Evans were accused of attacking an inmate after strapping him into a restraint chair. The corrections officers were investigated by the FBI and the Ohio Attorney General's Office.

“Inmates do not surrender their human dignity along with their freedom,” Yost said. “These two men abused their authority to pound a prisoner strapped to a chair. We wouldn’t stand for a dog to be treated like that – let alone by someone exercising the authority of the state.”

Over the past year, the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center has been at the heart of several indictments and accusations of abuse. In April, when Dugan and Evans were indicted, three other corrections officers were also accused of misconduct, including pepper spraying a restrained inmate, failing to secure the corrections center and falsifying records.

A month later, three additional indictments were filed against corrections officer employees. The staffers are accused of beating an inmate until his teeth came out and a warden is accused of telling employees to turn off their body cameras.

The U.S. Marshals released a report in late 2018 detailing their concerns with the facility, calling it dangerously overcrowded, and noted that inmates' rights were routinely ignored.

Cuyahoga County Sheriff Cliff Pickney said in October 2018, after a string of inmate deaths at the Corrections Center, that his office was "very concerned." He promised to do what was necessary to ensure the safety of everyone within the jail system.

In 2018, seven inmates died while at the Cuyahoga County Corrections Center, Cleveland Scene noted.