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The United States Justice Department, through its Bureau of Justice Statistics, reported in 2021 that 43 percent of the inmates in state prisons met the criteria for having serious mental health conditions.

As far back as 2006, Human Rights Watch U.S. Director Jamie Fellner said, “While the number of mentally ill inmates surges, prisons remain dangerous and damaging places for them. Prisons are woefully ill-equipped for their current role as the nation’s primary mental health facilities.”

Inmates with mental illness face more difficult coping with incarceration and the rules attached to it. The Justice Department reports that 58 percent of those inmates have been charged with violating prison rules compared to 43 percent of those without mental health problems. 24 percent of the mentally ill inmates have physically or verbally assaulted prison staff, and 20 percent have been injured in a fight.

The Justice Department also reports that mentally ill inmates are frequently punished by prison staff for symptoms of their illness: being noisy, refusing orders, self mutilation, or attempting suicide. These inmates are more likely to end up in punitive segregation where acute psychosis often pushes them over the edge.     

Kevin Coleman was one of those mentally ill inmates.

I first learned of his brutal killing from an inmate named Bobby Sneed who as an “inmate counsel-substitute” at the David Wade Correctional Center law library.

As soon as I learned about the killing, I called my wife and told her about it. She promptly called the Associated Press office in New Orleans. The AP ran a statewide story on the killing, prompting Wade officials to go into a damage control mode.

Over the next few weeks I pieced together from Sneed and other inmates and one correctional officer exactly what happened to Kevin Coleman.

I didn’t know Kevin Coleman, and probably would not have liked him had I known him.

But that’s not relevant.

I made a commitment that his death would not be forgotten. The following essay is an attempt to fulfill that commitment.        

This essay is a must because the Louisiana prison system continues to kill its inmates with impunity.

“This is why we love our jobs,” the tall, lanky prison Colonel shouted as he stormed up and down the cellblock tier.

“This is why we love our fucking jobs,” he repeated, staring menacingly into each cell at the sullen inmates, daring each to be foolish enough to challenge his authority.

It was a hot July 2001 morning. The Colonel was part of a “cell extraction team.” The team was comprised of the highest ranking officials at the David Wade Correctional Center. The team had just “extracted” Kevin Coleman from his maximum security disciplinary cell located in what was called the prison’s “South Compound.”

Armed with an electronic “stun shield,” a device that administered a 50,000-volt electrical charge, the extraction team hit Coleman with three charges. According to inmate witnesses, the “goon squad” – as the extraction team is known in the prison world – beat, kicked, and stomped Coleman into a submissive, fetal position before dragging him out of the cell. One of the lower ranking guards – probably in an effort to impress his supervisors – jumped up and down on Coleman’s head while another used a water hose to wash away the feces produced by the stun shield.

As the Colonel walked up and down the tier, the goon squad continued to beat Coleman’s unconscious body. The use of what is called “non-lethal force” in prison generally goes far beyond what is necessary to control an inmate. Guards try to inflict as much pain and physical damage as possible. That is an inherent, perverse trait in the personality of a prison guard – a desire to exert power over the powerless.

After everyone was exhausted from the physical exertion of inflicting the beating, the extraction team dragged Coleman’s limp – and probably lifeless – body into a cell equipped with a “restraint chair.” This torture device completely immobilizes an inmate. His head, arms, legs, and chest are tightly restrained by straps. This control device – the “chair” as it is known in prison – is only suppose to be utilized in those extreme situations where an inmate is in an uncontrollable state of violence.

Kevin Coleman was found dead in the restraint chair the following day from what prison officials called an “apparent heart attack.”

Based on the brutality of the beating inflicted upon Coleman, I suspect he was dead – or near complete respiratory failure – when he was strapped in the chair. The three electrical charges were enough to stop his heart. The ensuing traumatic beating was enough to kill a mule, much less a helpless man whose body was desperately trying to recover from electrical shock.

A paranoid schizophrenic, Coleman was a “problem” inmate. He had been transferred to Wade prison facility from a local parish jail because those officials could no longer deal with him. He immediately became a serious disciplinary problem at Wade, accumulating a record of disruptive and assaultive behavior. He repeatedly attacked guards and inmates alike, refusing to cooperate with the rule of authority or acclimate to prison peer pressure. Large doses of psychotropic medication did not quiet the demons that tormented him.

‘Coleman was really slung-off,” inmate counsel Bobby Sneed told me. “He was both sick and dangerous, but a rabid dog didn’t deserve what the ‘goon squad’ did to him.”

On the day of the cell extraction Coleman was scheduled for a hearing in a local courtroom on an assault charge against a prison guard. He refused to put on an orange jumpsuit given to him by the security escort team assigned to take him to court. All inmates were required to wear “jumps” to the local courthouse – a practice that reflected the racism, hostility, and contempt the local officials harbored against inmates in general.

No one will ever truly know who, or what, precipitated the confrontation that morning between Coleman and the “trip officers.” I know from experience the mindset of Wade trip officers. They were a privileged, and corrupt, group of officers – arrogant, quick to curse and humiliate inmates, and would lie to “get an inmate” in trouble or to cover up their own official wrongdoing.

Whatever motivated him, Coleman refused to put on the jumpsuit as instructed by the trip officers. Wade officials said every non-lethal measure available was used to get Coleman to cooperate and put on the jumpsuit. It was only after these non-lethal efforts failed, they said, that the cell extraction team entered the inmate’s cell with the electronic stun shield. Prison officials said only one electrical charge was inflicted, and that Coleman was still fighting and resisting after it was administered. At that point, officials said, a decision was made to put Coleman in the restraint chair.

Inmate witnesses, however, vehemently disputed that official account. They said Coleman was “hit three times” with the stun shield, brutally beaten inside his cell, dragged out of the cell into the hallway where he was beaten some more, hauled to the shower located at the end of the tier where he was stomped and kicked, and, finally, dragged, unconscious, into the cell with the restraint chair.

I was incarcerated at Wade at the time of Coleman’s death. Even before I had all the specifics surrounding the death, I called my wife to tell her about the death. She immediately alerted the New Orleans office of the Associated Press who reported the story.

Wade officials rushed to do “damage control” by putting their official “spin” on the story. They contacted officials with the American Correctional Association – a group with whom the Louisiana corrections system maintained an incestuous relationship through the ACA accreditation process – who defended the use of the restraint chair. And since there was not a single “investigative” news reporter in North Louisiana (crime stoppers reports passed for journalism in that part of the state), the Kevin Coleman prison death melted away into some official black hole.

The local sheriff’s department said it would “investigate” the matter. That was like the fox, feathers hanging out its mouth, saying it would investigate the disappearance of the hen. Detectives interviewed several inmate witnesses who were quickly transferred to other state penal facilities on trumped up disciplinary charges.

There are scores of Coleman-like deaths each year in the nation’s prison system. Many of them are official murders which are exactly what I think Kevin Coleman’s death was. These deaths rarely garner media attention. Coleman’s death would have gone completely unnoticed had my wife not called the Associated Press. That media attention at least forced Wade officials to explain, or cover up, what happened.

I agree with Bobby Sneed. No one should face death like Coleman faced it. His death would be “murder” in any society – except in prisons, military torture chambers, and renegade police interrogations.

There are situations in prison when force, both lethal and non-lethal, is necessary to control inmates. But a mentally disturbed inmate who refuses to put on a jumpsuit should not be hit with three 50,000-volt electrical charges, stomped and kicked into unconsciousness, and then strapped in a restraint chair.

That’s murder. These crimes are committed routinely in the world of prison – and there is no official accountability for them. No one was, or ever will be, held accountable for Kevin Coleman’s murder.

And that, indeed, was why the tall, lanky Colonel loved his job.