CHARLESTON — Justice administration Chief of Staff Brian Abraham said Thursday he’s hopeful a federal judge will consider evidence about conditions at the Southern Regional Jail is now secure and regular proceedings toward a possible trial can resume.
Two state workers who said the documents no longer existed were fired.
Abraham said the grievances in connection with conditions at the jail have always been at the jail despite what two now-former state workers told a federal magistrate judge.
“All of the documents, such as the electronic grievances, as well as paper grievances, in the thousands, are currently stored at the regional jail, always have been, and are now secure,” Abraham said.
Abraham said the state’s new attorneys on the case were at the jail Thursday.
The administration fired Brad Douglas, the former interim corrections commissioner and recently executive officer for the jails system, and Phil Sword, chief counsel for the homeland security agency, Wednesday for their responses about the requested information from a federal magistrate judge.
Douglas and Sword told U.S. Magistrate Judge Omar Aboulhosn in a hearing early last month that they had received prior notice to preserve the evidence but didn’t know where it was.
Abraham said the pair dropped the ball.
“From the quoted testimony in that order, these individuals indicated it (preserving the evidence) wasn’t done. They were aware they were required to do it and just failed to do so and that’s just not acceptable in the Justice administration,” Abraham said on “Talkline.”
The continued roadblocks faced by the plaintiffs to get the information was a big reason why Aboulhosn issued a scathing order earlier this week saying the evidence must have been destroyed since it couldn’t be found. Aboulhosn recommended U.S. District Judge Frank Volk reach a deferred judgment in the case, which would give the plaintiffs a victory in the case without a trial.
Aboulhosn described a systemic failure to save electronic and written materials, writing “the intentional decisions to not preserve evidence, and to allow evidence to be destroyed was not done by low-level employees of the WVDCR but was perpetrated by the highest persons in the chain of
command.”
Abraham said he’s hopeful Volk will consider another option now that they know the evidence has been found.
“If we want a fair playing field, then the court certainly, the District Court, could order that to be immediately disclosed, granting the plaintiff such time as they needed to review those and then put everybody back at the table together,” Abraham said.
Abraham said Thursday he believes that if the case goes to trial the state will win.
“The state believes it had a very strong defense, to lose that, or blow that, by the testimony of some blatantly incompetent individuals in their testimony would seem like an extreme remedy against the state of West Virginia,” Abraham said.
Abraham also said Thursday there’s indication some of the evidence may have been offered to the plaintiffs earlier.
