CONWAY -- Video footage and officer reports indicate jailers acted appropriately when they searched a cell that murder suspect Hunter Drexler shares with others and disciplined him by putting him in a restraining chair, Faulkner County Sheriff Matt Rice said Tuesday.
"As far as what I saw and what I read, I do believe they conducted themselves as they should have," Rice said.
Drexler, 18, of Clinton is one of four teenagers charged as adults in the July 21 shooting deaths of Robert and Patricia Cogdell, both 66, of Conway. Drexler has been jailed without bail since his arrest last summer.
Rice said he had viewed video footage and read correctional officers' reports about the encounter, which took place Sunday night. The search was a routine, random one to check for contraband, Rice said.
Reports indicated that "all of [Drexler's] personal effects" were lying on his bed when officers left and that Drexler was disciplined for causing a disruption, the sheriff said.
Rice said officers were not supposed to read the contents of any of Drexler's papers and that he did not see anyone doing so in the video footage.
Drexler's attorney, Patrick Benca, filed a court motion Monday saying jailers had raided Drexler's cell, taken personal and legal documents from it and placed Drexler in a restraining chair for 1½ hours.
The personal papers were returned but not the legal ones, Benca said. Jailers and some deputies have repeatedly violated Drexler's constitutional rights, Benca said in seeking an emergency hearing and requesting that bail be set.
In a response filed Tuesday with the circuit clerk's office, Chief Deputy Prosecuting Attorney Hugh Finkelstein wrote, "None of the defendant's legal mail was seized during the search."
"After the search was completed, the defendant became disorderly and was warned more than once to stop banging on the door to the pod," Finkelstein added. "After he refused to stop, pursuant to jail policy, the defendant was placed in a restraining chair."
"None of this was a violation of the defendant's Constitutional rights," the prosecutor wrote.
Asked Tuesday about the sheriff's account of what happened, Benca said in a text message, "That's not what happened. A hearing is on the horizon and I would like to resolve [the] issue in the courtroom."
When jailers do a cell search, they take detainees to a courtyard, or exercise area, Rice said. When inmates return to a cell, jailers strip-search them for contraband, such as a piece of fencing they may have brought inside.
In this case, Rice said, Drexler was among those who had some contraband in the cell: paper bags that he had turned into folders. Some inmates put the bags on lights, causing a fire hazard, or flush them down toilets, causing plumbing problems.
Unlike cells of the past, today's newer cells are much larger, more "like a community day room," Rice noted. Within those cells are pods, smaller areas with bunk beds. Because of a shoulder problem, Drexler lives in a medical cell that can hold about 10 inmates, the sheriff said.
Drexler was not disciplined because of the contraband, Rice said. Rather, Drexler was placed in the restraining chair from 7:14 p.m. to 8:55 p.m. because he had been "beating on the cell door," which has a window in it, Rice said. "He was told to stop several times" but persisted.
Rice released a copy of five correctional officers' reports.
Officer Kyle Glover wrote that as jailers prepared to leave the cell area, "Hunter Drexler started beating on the window saying that we had [taken] something of his that he wanted back. I went back and asked him what it was and he told me it was his folder that he made. I informed him that due to the [construction] of the folder that it was contraband and that he wasn't allowed to have it. I also informed him that I put all the property that was in the folder on his bunk and then I left."
Glover continued, "Approximately [10 to 20] minutes later I heard banging coming from upstairs and tower called available officers to Cell 203."
Rice said the restraint chair is placed where at least two people can monitor it, one from a safety tower and one by camera. The longest a detainee can stay in the chair is four hours, he said.
Officer Tyler Blankenship wrote that he was in the tower when Drexler called to say officers had taken his legal papers and his folders. Blankenship quoted Drexler as saying in part, "'yawl don't take folders from anyone but me this is messed up I want my stuff back.'"
Blankenship said he checked and was told officers had taken Drexler's folders but not his paperwork. Blankenship said he so advised Drexler.
Officer Bradley Bohm wrote that he told Drexler he was going to be put in the restraint chair for his own safety and "that we have had this conversation several times."
Drexler and Justin Staton, 15, of Conway are charged with two counts each of capital murder and other offenses. Anastasia Roberts, 17, of Conway and her boyfriend, Connor Atchley, 17, of Greenbrier, are charged with two counts each of first-degree murder and felony theft by receiving.
The Cogdells had been Staton's legal guardians since 2010 and had thought they were his paternal grandparents until DNA testing proved otherwise in 2008.
State Desk on 04/13/2016