Category: Security News

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

Remarks as Prepared for Delivery

Good afternoon. My name is Kristen Clarke, Assistant Attorney General for Civil Rights at the U.S. Department of Justice. Joining me is Ryan Buchanan, U.S. Attorney for the Northern District of Georgia.

The Justice Department has completed a comprehensive investigation into conditions at the Fulton County Jail in Fulton County, Georgia. Our investigation finds long-standing, unconstitutional, unlawful and dangerous conditions that jeopardize the lives and wellbeing of the people held there.

We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail. Detention in the Fulton County Jail has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of the atrocious conditions inside the facility. It’s not just adults but also young people who are subjected to conditions and treatment that violate the Constitution and defy federal law. Many people held in jails in our country have not been convicted — they are awaiting hearings or trial dates or are serving short sentences for misdemeanors.

The Fulton County Jail does not adequately protect incarcerated people from violence such as stabbing, sexual abuse or even murder. Physical deficiencies in the environment, such as unlocked doors and large holes in walls, permit and even facilitate brutality. Incarcerated people use makeshift weapons built out of jail fixtures to attack others, including vulnerable people with mental health needs and 17-year-olds. In 2023 alone, we identified 314 stabbings and more than a thousand assaults. This rate of violence exceeds what we’ve seen in other cities. The Fulton County Jail had as many stabbings in a single month as the Miami-Dade County Jail, a facility with 1.5 times more people, had all year. Since 2022, six people in the jail have lost their lives to violence.

I will walk through additional core findings set forth in the report we are issuing today:

• Living conditions at the jail are hazardous and unsanitary. Housing units are full of flooded water from broken toilets. Roaches, rodents and pests abound. Standing water, exposed wiring and vermin make living areas unsafe. The jail does not provide enough food, leaving people severely malnourished.
• The jail fails to provide constitutionally adequate medical or mental health care to people at the jail exposing people to preventable bad outcomes including injury, seriousness illness, pain and suffering, mental health decline and death. The lack of security staff and failure to prioritize health services impede access to care. Medical emergencies do not receive appropriate medical responses. People at risk of suicide do not receive sufficient protection and people with serious mental health needs do not receive adequate treatment.
• The jail uses solitary confinement, also known as restrictive housing, in discriminatory and unconstitutional ways that expose people — particularly 17-year-olds and people with mental health disabilities — to risks of harm, including acute mental illness and self-injury. The jail uses lengthy confinement in restrictive housing as punishment without written explanation, which violates due process.
• As Georgia is one of only four states where the juvenile justice system’s jurisdiction ends at 16, there are 17-year-old girls and boys also held at the jail. And these 17-year-old boys and girls are exposed to particular harm. It does not provide special educational services to 17-year-old boys and girls who are entitled to them under the Individuals with Disabilities Education Act; it fails to protect these children from violence, including sexual abuse; and it uses isolation to punish them, which both violates their rights and contradicts clear research that such isolation uniquely harms young people.
• The jail staff uses excessive force. This includes deploying tasers without reasonable cause. For example, detention officers tased a man after he said he felt like hurting himself and needed to see a mental health specialist. Such violations stem from understaffing, poor policies and training and supervisory failures.

The summary I have just shared is harrowing enough, but individual experiences are gut wrenching. For example, LaShawn Thompson, a Black man with serious mental illness, entered the jail on low-level charges and was confined to the mental health housing unit. Three months later, staff found him dead in his cell, infested with lice and, as a medical examiner concluded, “neglected to death.” Several months before that, another Black man with serious mental illness died after he stopped taking his medication. Two more Black men with mental health disabilities were murdered by their cellmates. Weeks after we opened our investigation, six more Black men died at the jail.

This is a racial justice issue: 91% of the people living in these abhorrent, unconstitutional conditions are Black — as compared to 45% of Fulton County’s overall population.

It is also important to note that the vast majority of the approximately 2,000 people held at the jail have not been convicted of a crime, are awaiting hearings and have yet to be tried.

There are also a significant number of people with mental health disabilities.

During our investigation, we worked closely with correctional, medical, mental health and educational experts. We physically inspected the jail and observed housing units. We visited medical and mental health service areas; reviewed thousands of pages of documents; and interviewed dozens of jail staff and leadership. And we listened to people held inside the jail and their advocates and family members. We thank officials for their cooperation and we thank those who provided valuable information and whose advocacy predates this investigation.

I’ll note that officials have taken preliminary steps to improve conditions, but they are simply not enough. We hope our findings report sounds an alarm that will prompt the Fulton County Board of Commissioners and the Sheriff’s Office to swiftly implement the comprehensive reforms necessary to ensure constitutional conditions going forward. The County has pledged to work cooperatively to resolve our findings. At the end of the day, people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door. Jails and prisons across the country must protect people from the kind of gross violations and unconstitutional conditions that we have uncovered here.

I will now turn it over to U.S. Attorney Buchanan.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A Colorado man was sentenced yesterday to 35 years in prison and a lifetime term of supervised release for his distribution of child sexual abuse material (CSAM) and involvement with a dark-web website dedicated to CSAM.

According to court documents, while still on parole for a 2013 Colorado conviction for sexual exploitation of a child, registered sex offender Christopher Carl Meier, 41, of Denver, became a member of a dark-web website dedicated to CSAM depicting boys and the discussion of the sexual abuse of minor boys. On July 9, Meier pleaded guilty to conspiracy to distribute CSAM and five counts of distribution of CSAM. Meier was a member of the website for more than 18 months and made more than 600 posts on the website. On this website, Meier advertised and distributed images and videos depicting minor boys engaged in sexual conduct. He made statements on the website admitting that he produced this material by tricking the boys into thinking that they were interacting online with a girl their own age and enticing them to disrobe and engage in sex acts on webcam. The FBI is aware of at least 65 victims of Meier’s conduct.

Principal Deputy Assistant Attorney General Nicole M. Argentieri of the Justice Department’s Criminal Division; Acting U.S. Attorney Matthew Kirsch for the District of Colorado; Assistant Director Chad Yarbrough of the FBI’s Criminal Investigative Division; and Special Agent in Charge Mark D. Michalek of the FBI Denver Field Office made the announcement.

The FBI Child Exploitation Operational Unit and Denver Field Office investigated the case.

Acting Deputy Chief Kyle Reynolds of the Criminal Division’s Child Exploitation and Obscenity Section (CEOS) and Assistant U.S. Attorney Alecia L. Riewerts for the District of Colorado prosecuted the case.

This case was brought as part of Project Safe Childhood, a nationwide initiative to combat the growing epidemic of child sexual exploitation and abuse launched in May 2006 by the Justice Department. Led by U.S. Attorneys’ Offices and CEOS, Project Safe Childhood marshals federal, state and local resources to better locate, apprehend and prosecute individuals who exploit children via the Internet, as well as to identify and rescue victims. For more information about Project Safe Childhood, visit www.justice.gov/psc.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

The Justice Department announced today its findings that conditions of confinement at the Fulton County Jail (the Jail) in Georgia violate the 8th and 14th Amendments to the U.S. Constitution, the Americans with Disabilities Act, and Individuals with Disabilities Education Act.

The department’s report details its findings from a comprehensive investigation of the Jail, funded and operated by Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office. The investigation included the Main Jail in Atlanta and three annex facilities: the Marietta Annex in Atlanta, the North Annex in Alpharetta, and the South Annex in Union City. The Jail currently houses around 2,000 people and in recent years has surpassed 3,000 people.

“Lashawn Thompson’s horrific death was symptomatic of a pattern of dangerous and dehumanizing conditions in the Fulton County Jail,” said Attorney General Merrick B. Garland. “The Justice Department’s report concluded that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office allowed unsafe and unsanitary conditions at the Jail.  As a result, people incarcerated in the Fulton County Jail suffered harms from pest infestation and malnourishment and were put at substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people — including homicides, stabbings and sexual abuse. The unconstitutional and unlawful conditions at the Fulton County Jail have persisted for far too long, and we are committed to working with Fulton County and the Fulton County Sherrif’s office to remedy them.”

“We cannot turn a blind eye to the inhumane, violent, and hazardous conditions that people are subjected to inside the Fulton County Jail,” said Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division. “Detention in the Fulton County Jail has amounted to a death sentence for dozens of people who have been murdered or who died as a result of the atrocious conditions inside the facility. It’s not just adults but also children who are subjected to conditions and treatment that violate the constitution and defy federal law. Many people held in jails in our country have not been convicted — they are awaiting hearings, trial dates or are serving short sentences for misdemeanors. At the end of the day, people do not abandon their civil and constitutional rights at the jailhouse door. Jails and prisons across the country must protect people from the kind of gross violations and unconstitutional conditions that we have uncovered here. We hope our findings report sounds an alarm that will prompt Fulton County officials to work with the Justice Department to implement the reforms necessary to ensure constitutional conditions going forward.”

“In Fulton County, people in custody awaiting formal charges or trials frequently must protect themselves from brutal physical attacks, endure frequent excessive force, manage their wellbeing with inadequate food and unsanitary living conditions, and hope they can find access to a strained medical and mental health care program. This is unacceptable,” said U.S. Attorney Ryan K. Buchanan for the Northern District of Georgia. “Our Constitution requires humane conditions while incarcerated that, at a minimum, ensure people in custody are safe. The findings regarding the Fulton County Jail reveal grave and diffuse failures to safeguard the men and women housed in its facilities, including a disturbing frequency of deaths among incarcerated people. We expect Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office to share our sense of urgency about the seriousness of the violations described in this report and to work cooperatively with our office and the Justice Department to remedy these systemic deficiencies in the Jail.”

Following an extensive investigation, the department concludes that Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office routinely violate the rights of people incarcerated at the Jail. Specifically, the department found that the Jail:

• Fails to protect people from the substantial risk of serious harm from violence by other incarcerated people, including homicides, stabbings, and sexual abuse.
• Houses incarcerated people in unconstitutional living conditions that are unsanitary and dangerous.
• Fails to provide adequate medical and mental health services to incarcerated people.
• Uses solitary confinement in discriminatory and unconstitutional ways that exposes incarcerated people, including 17-year-old children and those with mental health disabilities, to substantial harm.
• Fails to provide special education services to 17-year-old boys and girls who are entitled to those services while they are incarcerated at the Jail.

The unlawful and dangerous practices identified in the report are long-standing and have contributed to multiple deaths and other serious harm. From 2022 to the present, six incarcerated people have died in violence at the Jail. In 2023, there were more than 300 stabbings in the Jail which involved uncontrolled contraband and makeshift weapons. There have been four deaths from suicide in the past four years, including as recently as April.

The Justice Department conducted its investigation of the Fulton County Jail under the Civil Rights of Institutionalized Persons Act (CRIPA), Americans with Disabilities Act, and the Violent Crime Control and Law Enforcement Act of 1994, 34 U.S.C. § 12601, which prohibits law enforcement officers from engaging in a pattern or practice of conduct that deprives people of rights protected by the Constitution or federal law. These statutes authorize the Attorney General to file a lawsuit in federal court seeking court-ordered remedies to eliminate a pattern or practice of unlawful conduct. The department provided Fulton County and the Fulton County Sheriff’s Office with written notice of the supporting facts for its conclusions and the minimum remedial measures necessary to address the alleged violations. The County will work with the Justice Department toward a cooperative resolution.

The findings announced today are the result of the Justice Department’s civil investigation and are separate from any criminal cases brought by the Justice Department.

The Civil Rights Division’s Special Litigation Section and U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Northern District of Georgia investigated the case.

The Civil Rights Division continues to prioritize unconstitutional conditions and violations of federal law in correctional and juvenile justice facilities. It opened new investigations into prisons and jails in Tennessee, California, South Carolina, and juvenile justice facilities across Kentucky. The division also issued findings in its investigations of Mississippi prisons, Texas juvenile justice system’s facilities, and the Georgia Department of Corrections. The division is also litigating the constitutionality of conditions in Alabama’s prisons for men.

For more information about the Civil Rights Division and the Special Litigation Section, please visit www.justice.gov/crt/special-litigation-section. You can also report civil rights violations to the section by completing the complaint form available at civilrights.justice.gov/. To provide information related to the department’s investigation of the Fulton County Jail, please call 1-888-473-4092 or email the department at FultonCountyJail@usdoj.gov.

Source: United States Department of Justice Criminal Division

A South Carolina man currently residing in Brazil pleaded guilty earlier this week in federal court in San Francisco to conspiracy to submit a false claim.

According to court documents and statements made in court, Robert Xan Paul, 45, of Sao Paulo, Brazil, conspired with others to defraud the United States by preparing and submitting to the IRS a fraudulent income tax return that claimed a nearly $600,000 refund, which the IRS paid. Paul was a client of O.I.D. Process, a business owned by his co-conspirators that helped others prepare and file individual federal income tax returns that claimed fictitious Original Issue Discount interest income and federal tax withholdings, resulting in fraudulent claims for tax refunds.

To support his refund claim, Paul created fraudulent IRS forms from financial institutions where he had accounts. Those forms falsely indicated that the financial institutions had withheld federal income tax on his behalf.

In total, Paul caused a tax loss to the IRS of $595,110.

Paul pleaded guilty to one count of conspiracy to submit false claims. He is set to be sentenced on Jan. 21, 2025. Paul faces a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison. He also faces a period of supervised of release, restitution and monetary penalties. A federal district court judge will determine any sentence after considering the U.S. Sentencing Guidelines and other statutory factors.

Acting Deputy Assistant Attorney General Stuart M. Goldberg of the Justice Department’s Tax Division and First Assistant U.S. Attorney Patrick D. Robbins for the Northern District of California made the announcement.

IRS Criminal Investigation is investigating the case.

Trial Attorney J. Parker Gochenour of the Tax Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Michael Pitman for the Northern District of California are prosecuting the case.