To: Attorney General Eric Holder, U.S. Attorney General
Attorney General Holder: Investigate Florida Prison Deaths
We urge you to investigate—along with other suspicious Florida prison deaths—that of Mr. Darren Rainey on June 23, 2012 in the Dade Correctional Institution in Miami-Dade County. No prisoner should ever again be exposed to the type of cruel and unusual punishment (being placed in a locked, 180 degree shower for two hours) that took Mr. Rainey’s life.
Why is this important?
On June 23, 2012 Darren Rainey, a 50-year-old mentally ill state prison inmate in Miami-Dade County, died after guards responded to his defecating in his cell by locking him into a 180-degree shower for two hours—at which point his skin was separating from his body. Local police, and the state, failed to properly investigate. The case was only brought to light in recent months by The Miami Herald. After two years, no one has been held criminally accountable, or even charged. Only the U.S. Department of Justice can properly investigate this terrible crime, and a broader culture of abuse in Florida’s prisons that has led to other unnecessary deaths, and which falls especially hard on the mentally ill.