The investigator was soft-spoken but relentless.
“Look at me and tell me that you were not in that gymnasium,” said
Trebor Randle, a Georgia Bureau of Investigation agent, sitting across a
small table from the corrections officer.
“And then what?” said Sgt. Christopher A. Hall, his voice a choked whisper. “What happens to me?”
A month earlier, in December 2010, Hall led an emergency response
team at Macon State Prison in central Georgia responding to a fight
between an inmate, Terrance Dean, and a guard. Hall’s team broke up the
fight, handcuffed Dean and took him into the prison gym. Dean emerged
with a massive head injury, comatose and clinging to life.
For weeks, Hall and the rest of his team maintained that Dean
“snatched away” from the officers holding him, then fell and hit his
head while running away. But in the videotaped interrogation of Hall by
Randle, viewed by The Huffington Post, the guard admitted the simple
truth: a handcuffed Dean was beaten by guards as punishment for
assaulting their fellow officer.
“I don’t think my guys meant to do it,” Hall said. “It just happened. They just went too far.”
