On Wednesday evening, Governor Jim Justice’s administration announced that missing evidence had been found in a class action lawsuit against state officials over indigent conditions at a prison – they said they had been there the whole time.
The revelation – which resulted in the by two high-ranking officials of the Department of Homeland Security – came after a federal judge found intentionally destroyed Evidence in a lawsuit alleging inhumane conditions at the Southern Regional Jail in Raleigh County. Inmates were denied water and frequently slept in toilet water on the floor of their cell, the lawsuit says.
But relevant documents are still missing, according to Beckley attorney Steve New, who filed the motion. legal action against the state in 2022.
New has still not been informed whether he will see the missing emails and cellphone records he requested, including those of former high-ranking prison officials. The Justice Department said the evidence was accidentally deleted.
“We sent out letters of evidence in July. [2022]”, said New.
Emails are also missing from a separate class action lawsuit from 2019 legal action filed against Justice and former executives of the West Virginia Department of Health and Human Resources for allegedly mistreating children in the state Overburdened care system. Although Justice touted transparency within his administration this week, it remains unclear what led to the missing evidence. Both sets of deleted records came to airy in recent weeks, and the governor has come under scrutiny for crises in both the prison system and foster care.
Marcia Lowry is legal director of A Better Childhood, a national nonprofit that, along with local attorneys, filed the foster care lawsuit against Justice and DHHR. The suit alleges the state sent children to unsafe out-of-state facilities and left them to languish with no plans for lasting placement.
Lowry does not expect the missing electronic evidence, including emails from former high-ranking DHHR officials, to be found.
“The plaintiffs, the attorneys for the children in foster care, are very concerned that the state failed to preserve emails from many key officials and heads of the child welfare agency for a significant period of time, even though state officials knew they were required to do so,” she said.
“Although we have no evidence that this was intentional, we are asking the court to hold an evidentiary hearing to find out how all of these emails came to be deleted.”
Lowry added that negligence should have consequences. A better childhood demanded sanctions against DHHR last week due to lack of evidence.
DHHR’s lawyers argued that they could not provide the evidence requested by the governor because “Gov. Justice does not use email.”
State may retain emails of former officials named in lawsuits
The state’s communication about the retention of electronic records for the two lawsuits was not clear: The head of the Department of Homeland Security said the state’s IT policy required former employees’ emails to be deleted after five months, while a lawyer representing DHHR in the lawsuit said The state’s IT policy required deletion after 30 days.
Samantha Knapp, communications director for the West Virginia Department of Administration, confirmed that the state’s policy is to delete emails from former employees after 30 days.
She noticed that Email accounts managed by the State Office of Technology that have been marked for legal hold will be deactivated when the departing employee leaves the company, but the data will remain available until needed for legal proceedings.
“Any agency that needs to request a legal hold on a particular account may do so by contacting the [West Virginia Office of Technology] security team,” she said.
New said the state knew it needed to preserve electronic evidence related to the lawsuit against the Southern Regional Jail.
“If someone wants to secure evidence, … all they need is an email from the relevant authority requesting the evidence to be secured, and the evidence can be secured with one click of the mouse,” he said.
On Wednesday, the governor said he wanted be see-through and expected honesty from his employees.
The governor’s office did not respond to questions for this article, including whether it was trying to recover emails related to the Southern Regional Jail and the foster care lawsuits.
Numerous lawsuits are directed against indigent conditions in state prisons
Justice Department Chief of Staff Brian Abraham said MetroNews On Thursday, he expressed hope that the federal judge in the Southern Regional Jail case would take note of the documents found so that the case could continue.
Abraham said the grievance documents detailing the inmates’ complaints and the state’s response to them were always in the prison, despite statements made by the fired DHS employees to the judge last week.
“All documents, including thousands of electronic and written complaints, are currently kept in the regional prison. This has always been the case and is now safe,” Abraham said.
New said on Thursday that he had not yet seen the newly emerged abuses and only had documents from 2021 and 2022.
“So far we have not seen any complaints for [2018 through 2020]”We saw summaries of complaints and Excel spreadsheets showing how many there were in those years,” he said.
Earlier this year, New filed separate action against the state, including the judiciary, about the inhumane conditions in all state correctional facilities, including juvenile detention centres.
The lawsuit seeks to force the state to spend $270 million from the governor’s budget. touted budget surplus to address outstanding maintenance projects, staffing shortages, and overcrowding in West Virginia’s prisons and jails.
In another separate criminal case, two state correctional officers pleaded guilty on Thursday in a fight that led to the death of a 37-year-old male inmate at the Southern Regional Jail in 2020.
This story has been updated to correct that only DHHR emails were deleted, not cell phone records.
