By JOSH MITCHELL
Editor
River Mississippi News
TENNESSEE — An ex-jail guard in Tennessee will spend over a year of his own life behind bars for filing a factually inaccurate report after he was formally accused of sexually abusing a post-surgical hospitalized prisoner he oversaw.
James Stewart Justice will spend one year and three months in prison following the FBI Memphis Field Office probe into the ex-Maury County, Tenn. jail guard.
The fraudulent report filed by Justice took place during the course of a federal civil rights investigation.
A jury convicted him.
“This defendant abused his authority as a corrections officer to cover up allegations of sexual misconduct,” Assistant Attorney General Kristen Clarke of the Justice Department’s Civil Rights Division stated in a Monday DOJ news release, adding, “We will continue holding officers accountable when they abuse their position of power to cover up their unlawful conduct.”
Corrections officers carry out important roles in U.S. society, and most do so with “honor and integrity,” U.S. Attorney Henry C. Leventis for the Middle District of Tennessee said in the release.
This sentence is a result “of relentless efforts by the FBI to bring to justice corrections personnel who abuse their position of trust,” the release states, quoting, Special Agent in Charge Douglas S. DePodesta of the FBI Memphis Field Office.
Protecting the safety and civil rights of inmates is of paramount concern to the FBI, DePodesta added. Federal court documents, according to the news release, show that Justice, who used to have a last name of “Thomas,” wrote the false report after he was accused of sexually mistreating an inmate he was guarding in a hospital room after a surgical operation.
The release states, “In his report, Justice falsely claimed that he had reported to two Maury County Jail supervisors that an inmate had made sexual advances toward him while the inmate was in his custody at the hospital, falsely claimed that those two Maury County Jail supervisors both advised him not to write a report about the inmate’s alleged sexual advances and omitted a claim he later made to criminal investigators that he had a sexual relationship with the inmate after the inmate’s release from custody.”
The FBI Memphis Field Office is part Nashville Resident Agency investigated the case.
Trial Attorney Kyle Boynton of the Civil Rights Division and Assistant U.S. Attorney Amanda J. Klopf for the Middle District of Tennessee prosecuted the case.
