OKC, Ok April, 15 (The Oklahoma Post)
A federal jury of Mathew Ware’s peers convicted the former Kay County Oklahoma supervisory corrections officer of violating the civil rights of three pretrial detainees held at the Kay County Detention Center (KCDC).
Ware was convicted of facilitating white supremacist prison gang assault on Black inmates. Prison gangs run rampant in Oklahoma jails, often placing convicted murderers with those pretrial dispositions for simple misdemeanors. Oftentimes a relationship develops between the Sherrif or corrections officers and those returning regularly for court appearances from the Oklahoma state prison system.
Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division and U.S. Attorney Robert Troester of the Western District of Oklahoma announced the press release below.
The jury convicted Mathew Ware, 53, of willfully depriving detainees of their right to be free from a corrections officer’s deliberate indifference to a substantial risk of serious harm and willfully depriving a detainee of the right to be free from an officer’s use of excessive force.
Ware was a supervisor and ordered corrections officers to move two Black pretrial detainees, D’Angelo Wilson and Marcus Miller, to a cell row housing white-supremacist gang affiliated inmates whom Ware knew posed a real danger to Wilson and Miller. Known gang members are often separated by gang affiliation by placement into different housing blocks intentionally. However, Ware gave officers an order to unlock the jail cells of Wilson and Miller, and those other white supremacist inmates at the same time the following morning activities. Upon Ware’s timing and direction, the orders were followed, and the white supremacist inmates attacked Wilson and Miller. The inmates were also left unattended and restrained in a stretched-out position for long periods.
Ware faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison, three years of supervised release, and a fine of up to $250,000 for each violation.
According to Pacer Online, the sentencing will take place in approximately 90 days.
(Writing by Rachel Meyers; Editing by Robbie Robertson)
Copyright 2022 The Oklahoma Post
