A former West Virginia correctional officer was sentenced to 24 months in prison on Oct. 30 for conspiring to assault inmates and conceal abuse, the U.S. Justice Department said.
Michael Pack, 40, had pleaded guilty on March 30 to a federal conspiracy charge. The department announced his sentence in its Oct. 30 press release, titled “Former Correctional Officer Sentenced on Federal Civil Rights Charges in Connection with Conspiracy to Violate Inmates’ Rights at West Virginia Jail.”
Pack worked at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, West Virginia. The conspiracy involved officers using unjustified force to punish inmates or retaliate against them, including people detained before trial.
Pack admitted that he and other officers struck and harmed inmates they believed had misbehaved, according to court records cited by the department. They took inmates to areas outside surveillance cameras’ coverage to carry out assaults without recordings that could expose their actions.
In one incident, Pack and other officers repeatedly struck a detainee awaiting trial and used pepper spray on him as punishment for kicking his cell door. Pack admitted participating in that assault.
In another incident, officers took a second detainee awaiting trial to an interview room that surveillance cameras did not cover. Other officers assaulted the detainee while he was handcuffed and posed no threat. Pack admitted that he had an opportunity to intervene but did not do so.
The officers also concealed their actions through false reports. Pack admitted that they denied using unjustified force and omitted inmates’ injuries to prevent investigations and avoid accountability.
Pack admitted writing one such report after other officers used force against a detainee awaiting trial in an interview room outside camera coverage. His account omitted that he and the other officers had taken the detainee into that room.
He also falsely reported that the detainee suffered no injuries. Pack was present after the assault when officers escorted the handcuffed detainee from the room with blood coming from his head.
“Michael Pack conspired with other correctional officers to illegally assault and punish inmates in his custody,” said Harmeet K. Dhillon, assistant attorney general for the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division.
Dhillon said Pack had abused his authority and that his sentence held him accountable. She and Moore Capito, U.S. attorney for the Southern District of West Virginia, announced the sentence.
The FBI’s Pittsburgh Field Office and its Charleston Resident Agency investigated the case. Lawyers from the department’s Civil Rights Division prosecuted it with the U.S. attorney’s office for the Southern District of West Virginia.
