Former West Virginia jail officers plead guilty to civil rights violation in fatal assault on inmate

CHARLESTON, W.Va. — Two more former correctional officers in West Virginia have pleaded guilty to a federal civil rights violation in the death of a man who died less than a day after being booked into a jail.

As part of plea agreements, Johnathan Walters entered a plea Monday in U.S. District Court and Corey Snyder pleaded guilty Tuesday to conspiring with other officers to beat Quantez Burks as retaliation at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver.

Walters and Snyder each face up to 30 years in prison and a fine up to $250,000. No sentencing date for either defendant was immediately announced.

They were among five ex-correctional officers and a former lieutenant at the jail who were indicted by a federal grand jury in November 2023, the same month that two other former jail officers entered guilty pleas in the beating.

Burks, 37, was booked into the jail on a wanton endangerment charge in March 2022. According to court documents, Burks tried to push past an officer to leave his housing unit. Burks then was escorted to an interview room where correctional officers were accused of striking him while he was restrained and handcuffed.

Walters and Snyder admitted knowing the interview room had no surveillance cameras and that inmates and pretrial detainees who had previously engaged in misconduct had been brought to the room for punishment, according to court documents.

Two other defendants face sentencing in the case in January, and three more are set for sentencing in February. A trial for the remaining defendant is scheduled for Dec. 10.

The case has drawn scrutiny to conditions and deaths at the jail. Last year, West Virginia agreed to pay $4 million to settle a class-action lawsuit filed by inmates who described conditions at the jail as inhumane. Gov. Jim Justice’s administration fired a Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation official and the chief counsel for the state Department of Homeland Security after a federal magistrate judge cited the “intentional” destruction of records in recommending a default judgment in the lawsuit.

The state medical examiner’s office attributed Burks’ primary cause of death to natural causes, prompting the family to have a private autopsy conducted. The family’s attorney revealed at a news conference in 2022 that the second autopsy found Burks had multiple areas of blunt force trauma on his body.