Jones v. City of St. Louis

In a blatant disregard for detainees’ safety and humanity, the St. Louis City Justice Center (CJC) jail correctional officers create a culture of profound fear and control with often indiscriminate, excessive macing and water deprivation. The MacArthur Justice Center is working to hold jails and prisons alike, and the cities that run them, accountable for their torturous use of chemical agents and other human rights violations against those in their custody.   

For at least half a decade, the CJC in St. Louis, Missouri, has notoriously resorted to excessively and indiscriminately using chemical agents, such as mace and pepper spray, and water shut offs against those detained at the jail, including Derrick Jones, Jerome Jones, Marrell Withers, and Darnell Rusan.   

The four men filed a federal lawsuit against the City of St. Louis, as well as CJC officials, for violating their constitutional rights by using chemical agents and water shutoffs not as a security measure but as a inflict pain and suffering on detainees.

The lawsuit details CJC correction officers’ attack on Derrick Jones, in which they unnecessarily maced him after he requested to move to a different cell because his cellmate was showing symptoms of COVID-19. After being maced, Mr. Jones was taken to the ground, kicked, handcuffed, and maced again. Despite him asking for help, a lieutenant allegedly said, “[l]et him marinate.” Mr. Jones later saw a medical staff member who washed his eyes, but he was taken to solitary for eight days and denied a shower and change of clothes, despite jail policy requiring staff to provide clean clothes to detainees after they have been maced. 

Darnell Rusan was excessively maced twice. During the first incident, after correctional officers maced him, they removed him from the shower, handcuffed him, and slammed his head into an elevator wall. During the second incident, Mr. Rusan and others were subjected to body cavity searches and sprayed with a large quantity of mace while nude. Afterwards, CJC staff denied him medical attention and left him in the same room, without clothing, for four hours. 

The lawsuit also includes details of Jerome Jones’ and Marrell Wither’s similar incidents with CJC correctional officers, alongside other detainees who jail staff used excessive amounts of chemical agents against without warning or cause. Notably, the documents include more instances of detainees who were physically restrained or inside locked cells when they were maced. The CJC’s unaddressed, rampant abuse of detainees underpins the larger, widespread retaliatory custom of violence within the CJC ecosystem. 

The MacArthur Justice Center, alongside ArchCity Defenders, Rights Behind Bars, and the Saint Louis University School of Law Legal Clinics, filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the City of St. Louis and the implicated City Justice Center Correctional Officers for their violation of the Fourteenth Amendment.

Watch recently released evidence from the CJC jail:

Additional videos and documents can be found here.