Lawsuit: Guards beat, taunt inmate with, ‘You can’t breathe’

By MORGAN LEE
Associated Press

SANTA FE, N.M. (AP) — An advocacy group for prisoners’ rights has filed a civil rights lawsuit against corrections officers who allegedly ignored requirements that they videotape a prison-cell encounter with an inmate, who says he was sexually abused, beaten without provocation and taunted with words that evoked the 2020 death of George Floyd at the hands of police. The New Mexico Prison & Jail Project filed the civil lawsuit Tuesday seeking unspecified damages in U.S. District Court on behalf of a Black inmate against five state Corrections Department officers, in connection with a 2021 confrontation at the Northeast New Mexico Correctional Facility in Clayton. Officers previously denied the inmate’s account of sexual and verbal abuse.