Gregory Mayfield
A federal lawsuit filed by a former Baxter County jail inmate alleging he was the victim of excessive force while locked up in the facility has been on hold because the man who filed the suit couldn’t be found.
Twenty-two-year-old Gregory Mayfield has now been located and is back in the Baxter County Detention Center. He was booked into the jail on a no bond hold at 4:40 p.m. Thursday.
The arresting agency is shown as Arkansas Community Corrections (ACC). He is charged with violating parole.
It has proved difficult to locate Mayfield at various times since his suit was filed in the Federal District Court for the Western District of Arkansas in mid-January last year.
The latest attempt by the federal court to provide information to him was by letter sent to an address along Marion County Road 5017 in Bruno. According to federal court records, the letter was returned as undeliverable on August 27.
Mayfield has been changing addresses frequently.
Mail was returned in late April when sent to an address in Springdale provided by Mayfield. On June 9, he changed his address to Gassville, and on June 14 to the Bruno address.
In all, between June 2 last year and January 25, Mayfield notified the federal court of a change of address five times.
His case was very close to being dismissed in early June when mail was returned and Mayfield missed a May 26 deadline to contact the court and update his address.
The court gave Mayfield a second chance after he wrote in mid-June asking that his case not be thrown out.
Mayfield wrote, “I pray for the court’s mercy and understanding of my situation. I pray the worst has not happened and my case has been dismissed.”
A status conference in Mayfield’ federal case is now set for September 10.
OTHER AGENCIES LOOKING FOR MAYFIELD
One problem for Mayfield in remaining stationary has been that federal court officials were not the only ones looking for him.
On March 8, he was listed as a fugitive by the Mountain Home office of Arkansas Community Corrections (probation and parole).
He was on parole at the time he absconded after being convicted of stealing a coat out a vehicle belonging to an off-duty law enforcement officer in early November 2019.
Mayfield said he took the coat because he was cold.
He pled to the charges in the coat case on July 30 last year and was given a three-year prison sentence. Records show he spent very little time in prison.
During the time ACC was looking for him, Mayfield was at least sporadically maintaining contact and providing details as to his whereabouts to the federal court. It is not known if the federal court was aware of Mayfield’s fugitive status with ACC.
MAYFIELD’S FEDERAL COURT SUIT
There were a number of people in the Baxter County Sheriff’s Office originally named in Mayfield’s suit. The attorney representing the employees filed a motion for summary judgment in late August last year asking that all of Mayfield’s allegations be dismissed.
In his ruling released December 29 last year, Federal District Judge Timothy Brooks said only two of the allegations made by Mayfield could proceed to trial. He also dismissed all of the defendants from the suit except for Sgt. Ethan Raymond, who was a jailer at the time the alleged incidents took place.
Judge Brooks ruled that an excessive force claim in which Mayfield claims Raymond struck him on the side of the head on Dec. 7, 2019 could be tried.
Raymond has consistently denied striking Mayfield.
In his ruling, Judge Brooks noted that he could make no clear-cut decision on the matter since he had only seen “two directly contradictory sworn statements regarding the incident.”
There was not enough evidence beyond the statements of Raymond and Mayfield available to either prove or refute the allegations, Judge Brooks wrote.
The court allowed only one other claim made by Mayfield to remain open. It is one in which he alleges he was intimidated by Raymond.
Raymond was alleged to have threatened to charge Mayfield with a major infraction for appearing to be making threats toward jail staff.
In allowing the intimidation claim to proceed, Judge Brooks noted that after Mayfield filed a grievance on Jan. 5, 2020 alleging Raymond had violated his constitutional rights, a reply was sent to the inmate containing the words, “I hope you are not making threats toward staff that could be considered a major infraction.”
The court noted that after that message was delivered, “Mayfield filed other grievances about his conditions of confinement, but never mentioned Raymond or the alleged assault again.”
The question to be decided in this claim is “whether Jailer Raymond retaliated against Mayfield for exercising his First Amendment right to file grievances,” according to Judge Brooks.
A BLIZZARD OF GRIEVANCES
Mayfield filed a blizzard of grievances while in the jail ranging from the mundane to allegations he was assaulted and his life threatened.
In a 74-day span in November and December 2019 and January and early February last year, Mayfield filed at least 11 grievances
His complaints dealt with claims that he had not been given recreation time, been denied access to medicine, not given cleaning supplies, had the water in his cell shut off for three days, and not being permitted to take showers.
Jail staff contends that Mayfield tells only part of the story in his court filings regarding the grievances.
While he alleges he was not permitted to take showers, or prohibited access to the recreation yard, it is pointed out in filings made by the attorney for the jail staff that Mayfield refused to do both at times.
Mayfield also alleges water in his cell was shut off for three days, lights were left on all night and that he was supplied a plunger to flush his clogged toilet.
In the motion for summary judgment, the defendants contended that water was never cut off to Mayfield’s cell for three days, that lights were only turned on briefly during bed checks, and that if any inmate was responsible for clogging the toilet in his cell, the inmate would, as a matter of routine, be given a plunger to fix the problem.
Mayfield said jail personnel withheld medicine that could have caused him to lose slight in one of his eyes. His eye was not injured in jail, but when he was pistol-whipped in a Mountain Home residence.
He alleges the things that happened to him in the Baxter County jail add up to cruel and unusual punishment in violation of the 8th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
In dismissing many of Mayfield’s allegations, Judge Brooks said he did not believe “that relatively short, sporadic deprivations of cleaning supplies, recreation, showers, access to newspapers, or the law library, and having medicine delivered late on one occasion rose to the level of constitutional violations.”
Mayfield sometimes filed grievances because he alleged he had not received copies of earlier grievances he had requested.
The jail staff contended that Mayfield would make repeated requests for the same grievances, saying he had lost the ones originally provided to him.
During his many appearances in Baxter County Circuit Court, Mayfield always voiced one or more complaints regarding his treatment at the county jail.
The attorney representing the staff members at the jail earlier filed a general denial of all of Mayfield’s allegations.
The attorney then filed the motion for summary judgment. It was on this motion that Judge Brooks issued his ruling late last year.
SECTION 1983 LAWSUIT
Mayfield’s filing with the federal court is commonly referred to as Section 1983 litigation, since it is based on Section 1983 of the U.S. Code.
Section 1983 permits prisoners to sue correctional officials when conditions of confinement fail to meet constitutional standards in a number of areas — including physical security, medical care and freedom of religious expression.
At one point, Mayfield asked the court to appoint an attorney for him since he had no funds to hire one. The request was denied. There is no constitutional right to an attorney in a civil case such as the one filed by Mayfield.
Legal experts say many of the Section 1983-based lawsuits are frivolous, having no basis in law or fact. One judge was quoted as saying; Section 1983 allegations are mainly “brought by people with too much time on their hands.”
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