By Lisa Thompson
Erie Times-News
ERIE, Pa. — The state has agreed to pay $250,000 to settle a Pittsburgh woman’s claims that officials’ mishandling of mentally ill inmates caused her father to be murdered by his cellmate in a state prison in Forest County.
The settlement agreement between the plaintiff, Carla Davis-Vining, and the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections was obtained by the Erie Times-News from the state Attorney General’s Office through a Right-to-Know Law request.
The agreement states it was reached to “avoid further protracted litigation” of Davis-Vining’s civil rights case. The defendants continue to deny wrongdoing in connection with the Aug. 22, 2012, death of Davis-Vining’s 63-year-old father, Frederick Kirkland, at the State Correctional Institution at Forest, near Marienville.
In a lawsuit filed in October in U.S. District Court in Erie, Davis-Vining charged that prison staff violated her father’s Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment when an inmate with paranoid schizophrenia attacked Kirkland in their shared cell, beat, smothered and hung him before smearing him with feces and attempting to bite off his genitals.
A confidentiality provision bars the parties from commenting on the outcome. Susan N. Williams, of Greensburg, represented Davis-Vining. Senior Deputy Attorney General Mary Lynch Friedline represented the defendants, the state Department of Corrections; Department of Corrections Secretary John Wetzel; and a manager of a special needs unit at SCI Forest.
The lawsuit, which was dismissed June 10, was filed against the backdrop of a separate federal lawsuit filed against the state Department of Corrections by the Disability Rights Network of Pennsylvania, which alleged deficiencies in the management of mentally ill state prison inmates. That case, which was cited by Williams in Davis-Vining’s complaint, is pending in U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania.
Kirkland was serving a sentence for retail theft in Beaver County, which would have reached its maximum date on Dec. 31 of this year.
The lawsuit alleged that Kirkland suffered memory lapses from a prior injury and had difficulty following instructions. In August 2012, he was moved into the restrictive housing unit and placed in a cell with Elwood Braswell, 28, who had been diagnosed with paranoid schizophrenia and was serving three to six years on charges of aggravated assault and assault by a prisoner.
The lawsuit claimed, and the defendants disputed, that Braswell “had been observed engaging in acute psychotic behavior” and was not supposed to be housed with any other inmate, but that prison staff “ignored this classification” and placed Kirkland in Braswell’s cell.
At 1:40 a.m. on Aug. 22, 2012, Braswell awoke, “had a drink of water, ate two apples and decided to kill Mr. Kirkland.” Braswell believed Kirkland was God and he wanted God’s power, the complaint said.
The complaint said Braswell lured Kirkland to the cell door by telling him the nurse was there to see him. He then beat Kirkland, stepped on his head and smothered him with a pillow until he stopped moving. He then tried to break Kirkland’s neck with his hands, used sheets to hang him from the bed, put him on the lower bunk, beat him with a sock filled with bars of soap, urinated and defecated on him.
Braswell then sought to bite off Kirkland’s genitals because he believed that was the source of Kirkland’s power, according to the suit.
Staff found Kirkland at 5:40 a.m. when nurses went to the cell to administer medication. The lawsuit charged that rounds were not made as required on the night of the killing.
Braswell was found guilty but mentally ill of first-degree murder, aggravated assault and abuse of a corpse at trial in August in Forest County. He was sentenced to life in prison.