Prosecutors find no crime in hot-shower death at Dade Correctional Institution's mental health unit

Former Dade Correctional Institution officers won't face criminal charges

MIAMI – Nearly five years after the death of Darren Rainey, who suffered from schizophrenia and died while serving a two-year sentence for cocaine possession, prosecutors in Miami-Dade have found no evidence of a crime.

After Rainey smeared feces on himself, his bed sheets and the walls of his cell at the Dade Correctional Institution's Transitional Care Unit, where inmates with mental illness were held, correctional officers left him in a hot shower. He was confined there for nearly two hours. 

The 50-year-old inmate collapsed June 23, 2012. According to the medical examiner, Emma Lew, schizophrenic inmates like Rainey can have nervous system reactions that trigger a heart attack if they have an underlying condition.

The Miami Herald's 2014 investigation that prompted the County's investigation reported intentional torture. The office of the Miami-Dade State Attorney Katherine Fernandez Rundle released a close-out memo on Friday saying there was no evidence to support filing charges of murder or manslaughter.

"The evidence fails to show that any correctional officer acted in reckless disregard of Rainey's life," the close-out memo said

After the 72-page memo was released on the afternoon of St. Patrick's Day, Rainey's older brother, Andre Chapman, said in a press release that it hurts him every day "thinking about the torture and the pain" his brother "felt in the last moments of his life." 

Rainey’s family filed a civil lawsuit against the Florida Department of Corrections in 2016. Rainey's family attorney Milton Grimes of Los Angeles said in a press release his family waited three "long excruciating years" for the results of the investigation and now  they were "disappointed and heartbroken." 

Grimes, who filed a civil lawsuit on behalf of Kisha Michael in Inglewood, is representing Rainey's family, as reform advocates cite the case as an example of the need to improve the deplorable conditions of mentally ill prisoners nationwide

The memo said that Rainey didn't suffer burn injuries and the temperatures in the shower were not excessively high. Investigators also didn't find evidence that correctional officers at the Dade Correctional Institution regularly used a shower to punish or torture inmates. 

The Miami Herald reported TCU correctional officers had a "specially rigged a shower" to be "cranked up to scalding temperatures, or made frigidly cold, to punish inmates who were unruly," and also resorted to  "over-medicating them, forcing them to fight each other and starving them." 

The memo said corrections officers operated the shower from an adjoining room to prevent inmates from turning it off. Officer Roland Clarke told Rainey he couldn't go back to his cell until he was clean, the memo said. After starting to wash, Rainey said, "No, I don't want to do this." Clarke said they found him in about 3 inches of water with no pulse and not breathing.

One inmate, Harold Hempstead, said he heard Rainey yelling and kicking at the shower door, saying, "I can't take it no more." The prosecutors said his testimony was unreliable. An inmate claimed Rainey looked like a "boiled lobster." The autopsy attributed the "slippage" to friction on moist and warm skin, which could have happened during efforts to revive him, the memo said. 

"Placing an inmate who has defecated upon himself in a shower to decontaminate himself is not conduct that is criminally reckless," the prosecutors' memo said. "There was no evidence of any intent to harm Rainey."

Grimes, Rainey's family attorney, said he disagrees with the conclusion.

"This is not justice for Darren, for his family, nor for the mentally ill who have been subject to similar abuse and mistreatment," Grimes said

PHOTOS OF SHOWER

 

 


About the Authors:

The Emmy Award-winning journalist joined the Local 10 News team in 2013. She wrote for the Miami Herald for more than 9 years and won a Green Eyeshade Award.