LUCASVILLE, Ohio — A federal jury in Cincinnati awarded $404,000 in damages recently to Tommy Meadows, an inmate at the Southern Ohio Correctional Facility in Lucasville — located in southern Ohio in what is one of the most important prisoner civil rights cases in recent years. It all stemmed from an attack by corrections officers, who bashed the inmate’s skull.
The five-day trial in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Ohio, presided over by Judge Jeffrey Hopkins, ended with the jury unanimously finding two corrections officers and a lieutenant liable for excessive force and retaliation. Jurors awarded Meadows $209,000 in compensatory damages and $195,000 in punitive damages.
Jurors determined the defendants violated Meadows’ Eighth Amendment right against cruel and unusual punishment on July 25, 2019, by bashing his skull into a concrete wall and floor during a “needless and gratuitous takedown and pile-on,” according to video evidence and trial testimony.
Meadows was then locked alone in a strip cell, handcuffed behind his back. Surveillance footage with timestamps in the upper left corner captured one officer approaching the cell door and deploying a full burst of pepper spray into Meadows’ face without provocation. Less than four minutes later, a second officer repeated the assault, again blasting Meadows with pepper spray while he remained cuffed and unresisting.
The jury also found the officers retaliated against Meadows’ First Amendment right to petition the government. After the assault, Meadows filed grievances that prison officials suppressed. His then-girlfriend, Madeleine Smith — now his wife, a former Ohio State University English Ph.D. student and member of the Redbird Books-to-Prisoners program — persistently appealed the suppression. Months later, the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction’s chief inspector acknowledged the error and processed the grievances.
In retaliation, one defendant officer — who had participated in the initial takedown — filed a disciplinary report claiming he overheard Meadows, while in restrictive housing, shouting through cell bars to an inmate three cells away about a plot to kill a guard and “land on death row.” The allegation was uncorroborated: the officer could not recall which supervisor he notified, no other staff heard the exchange, and no surveillance footage was reviewed to confirm the inmates were even speaking. Ultimately, the jury did not take the officer’s allegations as credible.
Love letters introduced at trial showed Meadows was falling in love with Smith and was two years from parole eligibility. The false charge nonetheless extended his prison sentence by two years.
Before trial, the state offered only $5,000 to settle. All three defendants, including the lieutenant later promoted to “commander” overseeing eastern Ohio prisons, testified they had “no regrets” and would not act differently today.
Attorneys Peter Pattakos and Emmett Robinson represented Meadows.
“This was one of the most significant civil-rights jury verdicts in the Southern District of Ohio in many years,” Robinson said. “Inmates rarely have counsel in these sorts of cases. These cases rarely go to trial. And inmates almost never win. But thank God that wasn’t the outcome here!”
Robinson expressed hope the verdict would spur major reforms at ODRC, where “a pattern of deeply troubling and well-documented abuse” persists despite many dedicated employees, he said.
In closing, Pattakos urged jurors: “DRC stands for ‘Department of Rehabilitation and Correction,’ not ‘Torture and Misery.’”
The plaintiffs will seek attorneys’ fees under federal civil rights statutes.