Guards charged over boot camp death on video
hetty ter haar
Richard Luscombe in Miami
Tuesday November 28, 2006
Guardian Unlimited
Seven prison guards have been charged with the fatal beating of a teenage inmate at a Florida boot camp, an incident that was captured on video and led the state to close its controversial military-style facilities for young offenders.
The grainy recording showed the officers allegedly choking and kicking Martin Lee Anderson, 14, at the Bay County Sheriff's Department Boot Camp in north Florida in January. The tape sparked outrage and allegations of a cover-up when a coroner announced that Martin's death the following day was due to complications of sickle cell disease.
The seven male guards, and a female nurse seen on the tape watching the beating, face up to 30 years in prison if convicted of the aggravated manslaughter of a child. A second postmortem revealed that the boy had died of suffocation.
"We hope that justice will be served and Martin Lee Anderson's family will have the answers to questions they have," said Jeb Bush, the Florida governor who announced the charges.
Frederica Wilson, a Democratic party state senator from Miami, said the nine-month inquiry had taken too long. "If you go to a 7-Eleven and steal a pack of cigarettes and it's caught on videotape, they come and find you and arrest you," she said.
Martin's death was the third involving a black teenager at one of five state-run boot camps, which gained popularity in the 1990s as a character-building alternative to prison. Mr Bush signed a bill abolishing the camps in the summer and the inmates were sent to juvenile detention facilities around the state.
However, private boot camps, often run by religious organisations, continue to be popular in Florida.