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As part of plea agreements, Johnathan Walters entered a plea
Monday in U.S. District Court and Corey Snyder pleaded guilty
Tuesday to conspiring with other officers to beat Quantez Burks
as retaliation at the Southern Regional Jail in Beaver.
Walters and Snyder each face up to 30 years in prison and a fine
up to $250,000. No sentencing date for either defendant was
immediately announced.
They were among five ex-correctional officers and a former
lieutenant at the jail who were indicted by a federal grand jury
in November 2023, the same month that two other former jail
officers entered guilty pleas in the beating.
Burks, 37, was booked into the jail on a wanton endangerment
charge in March 2022. According to court documents, Burks tried
to push past an officer to leave his housing unit. Burks then
was escorted to an interview room where correctional officers
were accused of striking him while he was restrained and
handcuffed.
Walters and Snyder admitted knowing the interview room had no
surveillance cameras and that inmates and pretrial detainees who
had previously engaged in misconduct had been brought to the
room for punishment, according to court documents.
Two other defendants face sentencing in the case in January, and
three more are set for sentencing in February. A trial for the
remaining defendant is scheduled for Dec. 10.
The case has drawn scrutiny to conditions and deaths at the
jail. Last year, West Virginia agreed to pay $4 million to
settle a class-action lawsuit filed by inmates who described
conditions at the jail as inhumane. Gov. Jim Justice’s
administration fired a Division of Corrections and
Rehabilitation official and the chief counsel for the state
Department of Homeland Security after a federal magistrate judge
cited the “intentional” destruction of records in recommending a
default judgment in the lawsuit.
The state medical examiner’s office attributed Burks’ primary
cause of death to natural causes, prompting the family to have a
private autopsy conducted. The family’s attorney revealed at a
news conference in 2022 that the second autopsy found Burks had
multiple areas of blunt force trauma on his body.
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