Jury hears details on prisoner
An inmate at the State Correctional Institution at Fayette hanged himself using a bed sheet threaded through an air vent in his cell, a coroner’s jury learned Friday. Bernard Jefferson, 44, was in jail for a rape in the Philadelphia area, when he hanged himself in the Long-Term Segregation Unit (LTSU), part of the Restricted Housing Unit (RHU).
The LTSU, said deputy superintendent Mark A. Krysevig, is an area reserved for “the worst, most incorrigible inmates in the state.”
But since officials at the newly built facility have made changes, including adding staffing to the LTSU, coroner’s jurors made no recommendations to the prison.
Prison psychologist Dr. Gary Gallucci said he knew Jefferson from the former Western Penn lock-up in Pittsburgh, as well as Fayette.
During that time, Gallucci testified that Jefferson was never on a watch list for mentally ill inmates. The doctor said Jefferson recently expressed a desire to improve his behavior in hopes of being moved from the LTSU, and was working successfully toward that goal.
Corrections officer Calvin Bittner found Jefferson around 6:40 a.m. on June 28, when they brought around food and found a sheet covered the small window on Jefferson’s cell door. Bittner testified he opened the slot used to slide Jefferson’s tray in, but got no response, so he eventually pulled the sheet down and found Jefferson hanging.
After Jefferson was found, Sgt. Samuel Popovich acknowledged that he told state police that the inmates in the LTSU were counted in the morning, but said he did so only “to protect the unit.”
The count was not done, Popovich said Friday, because of a lack of manpower.
And since the prisoners in the LTSU were on lockdown, there was no chance of anyone escaping.
Jurors at the inquest also heard testimony from corrections officer Jay Taylor, who worked the midnight shift in the LTSU the night Jefferson died.
He testified that he did a count of inmates around 4:30 a.m., and counted Jefferson, despite not actually seeing him because the sheet covered his cell window.
He estimated that during a given round, it is not unusual to have as many as a dozen cells that guards can’t see into because they are covered, by sheets, feces or anything else inmates can get their hands on.
While he tried to get Jefferson to answer him, Taylor testified it is common for inmates to ignore guards.
“They don’t care nothing about you or your family, or the job you have to do,” Taylor testified.
Prison officials at the inquest said it was not reasonable to expect guards to stick their arms into the food slot to pull down anything covering cell windows because inmates – particularly those in the LTSU – could try to harm them.