The inmate was knocked unconscious as a result of the attack, the lawsuit said.
One of five former Memphis, Tennessee, police officers charged. This month in the fatal beating of 29-year-old. Tyree Nichols during a traffic stop in 2016 that left an inmate unconscious. According to a federal civil rights complaint.
The complaint, filed in April 2016 in U.S. District Court in Tennessee, said the office. Demetrius Haley was one of three corrections. Officers accused of assaulting Corderalius Sledge. While he was behind bars in Shelby County.
The case, which Sledge filed without a lawyer, was dismissed in 2018 after a judge found. He had not properly served one of the defendants with a summons.
Judge Thomas Anderson did not address Sledge’s allegations in an order dated March 2, 2018.
According to the complaint, Sledge said that on May 16, 2015. Officers searched his cellblock at the Shelby County Division of Corrections. Which houses inmates serving felony sentences and felony prison terms of up to 12 years.
Officers charged him with “prohibited” flushing after seeing smoke where he was. According to the lawsuit.
Sledge accused Haley and another officer of punching him. In the face, according to the lawsuit. A third officer picked Sledge up and slammed him face first. Into the sink and onto the floor, the lawsuit alleges. “After that I blacked out,” Sledge said in the lawsuit, adding that he woke up in the prison’s medical unit.
Sledge said he wanted the officers to be “held for their actions,” the suit says.
Reached by phone Tuesday, Sledge declined to comment.
Haley did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Attempts to reach two other officials were unsuccessful. A lawyer representing Haley. And another official did not respond to requests for comment Tuesday. Neither did a spokesman for the Memphis mayor’s office.
The Shelby County Department of Corrections. Did not respond to a request for comment Tuesday night.
In a court filing from June 2017, Haley and a second. Officer admitted to allegedly searching the sledge for obstruction. But denied beating him. In a separate filing later that year, they argued that the case should have been dismissed. Because Sledge did not properly follow the jail’s complaint process.
The judge dismissed Sledge’s complaint because he failed to provide. The correct address of a defendant who could not be located.
In the case of Nichols, who died three days after the Jan. 7 traffic stop. Haley and four other officers were fired. After an administrative review for many policy violations. Including the use of excessive force during the stop.
Preliminary results of an autopsy released Tuesday. By lawyers for Nichols’ family show he suffered “profuse bleeding from severe beating.” before his death. The Shelby County Medical Examiner’s. Office has not released an official cause of death. Nichols’ family hired a forensic pathologist to review her case.
After reviewing body camera video of the traffic stop. The family’s lawyers compared it to the 1991 beating of Rodney King in Los Angeles.
