May 21 Update on Rashid’s Situation

SUMMARY: Rashid has been thrown in solitary confinement in South Carolina again in retaliation for our phone/email campaign supporting him, and he is restricted to 2 handwritten letters per month (no phone/email access). He has restarted his hunger strike and is asking all of us to increase our phone calls and emails to the prison officials (not to back down). Details below.

DETAILS (5/19-5/21)

• On Monday 5/19 at around 9pm, Rashid was using the toilet with the lights out when a woman sergeant put her face in the window of his cell and asked him to turn the lights on. He replied that he was using the toilet, but she continued to stand there with her face in the window for about 30-45 seconds. The toilet is right next to the cell window, with the toilet bowl adjacent to the cell door. After he pulled his pants on, he turned the light back on. There is a security camera that points directly to his cell and should show that the sergeant was peering into his window, in direct violation of the Prison Rape Elimination Act (PREA), which generally prohibits non-medical prison staff from cross-gender viewing of prisoners’ private body parts, including when they are using the toilet.
• On Tuesday 5/20 morning, the prison told Rashid that Captain Lasley wanted to see him. Rashid was walked toward the administration building, and Lasley and an intelligence officer with the investigation office met him outdoors as he was on his way to the administration building. They told Rashid to turn around, put cuffs on him, and sent him to the Restrictive Housing Unit (RHU, i.e., solitary). Rashid asked why this was happening, but they did not answer.
  – About 10 minutes later, a special agent named Freole (unsure of spelling) from the SC DOC Inspector General’s office visited Rashid in RHU. The agent said he had driven over 1 hour to Perry just to tell Rashid (this is a summary, not a direct quote): “Tell your fucking people to stop calling and stop complaining about what’s going on here, or I will criminally charge you for harassment, you’ll stay in the hole, and you’ll get yourself hurt.” When Rashid replied that the prison should talk to the media and courts about it, the agent said Rashid won’t be talking to anyone because the prison had cut off his tablet access, including his phone and messages. (Relatedly, there is another prisoner at Perry named Jimmy Causey who lost his tablet access for an entire 2 years in retaliation for talking to an NBC reporter back in 2018.)
• Later that day on Tuesday 5/20, Rashid asked the RHU captain, a man named Blakeley, why he was back in the hole. Blakeley replied that a woman sergeant reported that Rashid had exposed himself to her last night. Rashid said the only remotely related incident was when he was using the toilet last night. Blakeley replied that Rashid needed to wait to see the incident report, which could take a few days because the major had to sign it. Rashid submitted a PREA grievance on Tuesday 5/20.
• Since arriving at Perry, Rashid has also been talking to another prisoner Christopher Woody. Christopher found out that someone tampered with his jury during deliberation in his murder trial, so he hired a private investigator to interview the jurors, and 2 of them admitted that some men who were not involved in case entered the deliberation room and made derogatory comments about him that swayed the jury to convict him. Some prison officials have seen Rashid talking to Christopher over the past few days and have tried to stand between them to block them from talking. Rashid suspects that he is in the hole not only as retaliation for the phone/call zap but also to prevent him from publicizing the jury tampering in Christopher’s case.

RASHID’S CURRENT CONDITIONS

• He is again sleeping on a concrete slab about 6 inches from the ground (but thankfully this time, he has clothes: a jumpsuit, boxer shorts, socks, and crocs)
• He cannot make phone calls or send messages to anyone; he can only hand-write 2 personal letters per month.
• There are no materials in his cell, so he is forced to sit in his cell all day with absolutely nothing to do.
• He restarted his hunger strike on Tuesday 5/20.
• His leg is still stiff and still hurts when he bounces on it, and he can’t run, but it feels like it’s mending; he is no longer limping when he walks.
• The prison has given him the property he accumulated since he arrived at Perry but has withheld all of his property from Keen Mountain (about 30 boxes of documents). They also stole most of his legal mail, including 2 packages I recently sent him, grievances he had prepared, some Westlaw (legal) notes, and his stationery from the law library.