Md. to settle claims against prison guard despite treasurer’s objections

ANNAPOLIS — Over objections from Treasurer Dereck Davis, who said the measure would fail to hold anyone accountable, Maryland will pay $45,000 to settle claims from an imprisoned man who alleged that in 2019 a guard physically and verbally abused and sexually assaulted him.

The three-member Board of Public Works approved the settlement during a meeting at the State House in Annapolis on Wednesday, with Davis voting against and Gov. Wes Moore and Comptroller Brooke Lierman voting in favor. All three are Democrats.

Lierman, who during her years as an attorney represented someone who had alleged they were harmed in prison and filed suit against the state, said the settlement saves the state from going to trial and potentially being on the hook for much more money.

“Because I take my duty to achieve best value for the state seriously, by voting to approve this settlement, we both protect the rights of Marylanders from harm by the state and we avoid a potentially much higher financial liability,” Lierman said during the meeting.

Davis, though, said the settlement fails to hold any state employees accountable. If the state is paying to resolve claims, then an employee should be sanctioned or face other discipline, he said.

“Too often when we read these case files, nobody seems to be at fault,” Davis said. “But yet, we’re writing a check. … When we walk away from this thing, nobody’s been punished, nobody’s been found guilty of anything. All the taxpayers have done is written a check. And I can’t go back in good conscious and explain how we’re writing these checks.”

Moore didn’t explain his vote in the way that Lierman and Davis did, though he acknowledged that the treasurer’s comments pointed to “larger structures that have to be addressed in the way this work is done.”

The settlement resolves a 2021 civil rights complaint from inmate Malik Shakur, who during the lawsuit changed his name from Anthony Clark Jr., against a corrections officer at the North Branch Correctional Institution in Cumberland.

Shakur alleged that, during a 2019 altercation, he was handcuffed, pinned facedown on the ground and not resisting when Officer John Portmess struck him repeatedly in the head with a mace canister, causing deep lacerations and substantial blood loss and leaving permanent scars from open wounds, according to court documents.

The inmate alleged that corrections officers then dragged him to a medical room where there weren’t medical personnel present and repeatedly struck him with closed fists, taunted him with racial epithets and threats, and sexually assaulted him.

Portmess denied Shakur’s allegations that he repeatedly struck the inmate in the head with a closed fist, threatened him, used racial epithets and sexually assaulted him, and that he had no knowledge of other prison staff members doing so, court documents state.

A prison medical staff member noted in Shakur’s records that he had four minimal lacerations and no other injuries, and that the inmate refused a physical examination, which Shakur denied doing.

Portmess alleged that he struck Shakur and knocked him to the ground in self defense after the inmate hit him in the face with a closed fist.

The officer stated in court documents that Shakur then charged at him, so the officer “applied a short burst of pepper spray to his facial area,” forced him to the ground and then struck him “several times with my pepper spray canister in the face and head in a continued effort to gain his compliance.”

Portmess said that responding prison staff members helped him control Shakur and place him in handcuffs.

Shakur initially requested $250,000 in compensatory and punitive damages, and unspecified declaratory and injunctive relief, court documents state.

This story has been updated to reflect the fact that the settlement recipient changed his name from Anthony Clark Jr. to Malik Shakur during the course of the lawsuit.