Kimberly Burks had just walked out of a plea hearing for two jail guards admitting guilt in a conspiracy to deprive her son, Quantez Burks, of his rights — actions that led to his death after 24 hours in the Southern Regional Jail.
Far short of feeling satisfied that justice was being served, the mother remained outraged and braced against the likelihood of returning to federal court for future hearings involving additional corrections officers.
As she expressed her frustration, anger and sorrow, Kimberly Burks drew a direct line to broader allegations of inhumane conditions in West Virginia’s jails — particularly Southern Regional, where 13 deaths occurred over a year’s time.
A separate class action lawsuit that focuses on Southern Regional Jail alleges a range of inhumane conditions including overcrowded spaces, crumbling plumbing, inmates sleeping on mats soaked with water from leaks, some being forced to sleep on concrete floors, poor air quality because of black mold and food that is spoiled or spread thin.
The conditions — particularly the crowding — results in heightened risk of violence or sexual assault, the lawsuit contends. And the lawsuit alleges inmates are beaten regularly for attempting to file a grievance, for talking back, for refusing orders or for voicing complaints.
Kimberly Burks says her family’s persistence has shined a light on conditions, resulting in greater scrutiny.
“I believe that in Quan’s case — I believe that when we first came out with this and everything that was going on, I believe it brought out a lot of other discrepancies at the SRJ — with the class action lawsuit going on, with the beatings, with the COs mistreating the inmates — yeah, it should help somewhere.
“If we can save one life from the COs at the SRJ, then I would say he did a good job. He died for one person to be saved because it will happen again if they don’t change their stance, change everything, the procedures and protocols. Because they have procedures and protocols that they should have followed, but they didn’t. They took a vow, they took an oath and they disrespected it.”
A series of events this past week focused attention on jail conditions in West Virginia.
One was the plea hearing for the two jail guards accused of participating in the beating death of Burks, who was a pretrial defendant. The central allegation is that after Burks tried to push past a corrections officer and leave the jail’s C-pod, officers restrained him in handcuffs and beat him in an interview room. The Burks family pushed for their own autopsy that revealed a heart attack brought on by blunt force trauma.
The other was a magistrate judge’s outraged filing that recommended default judgment in the class action lawsuit over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail. The judge’s indignation was prompted by testimony over lost or destroyed potential evidence — including emails, cell phone messages, security video and inmate grievances — that could shed light on what jail conditions truly are and how seriously state officials take those conditions.
Two top state officials were fired over last week the failure to maintain that evidence. State leaders also have said they were able to recover much of the email documentation while also locating some of the grievance records in both electronic and paper formats.
Following those revelations, Quantez Burks’ fiancee again told a local television station about the family’s belief in a conspiracy to keep the public from learning how Burks and a number of other Southern Regional Jail inmates died. “What’s done in the dark is gonna come to the light,” Latasha Williams told WVNS News in Beckley.
As all of this has unfolded, West Virginia remains under a state of emergency, first issued in August of 2022, because of a longstanding staffing shortage in the jails system.
Corrections officials told lawmakers last month that the situation is improving incrementally now that pay incentives have started taking effect. The Legislative Oversight Committee on Regional Jail and Correctional Facility Authority, which includes delegates and senators, is set to meet again Nov. 14 in Wheeling.
“I do believe we need to be looking at jail conditions. The most recent developments are very troubling to me,” said Delegate David Kelly, R-Tyler, chairman of the House Jails and Prisons Committee.
Senator Shelley Moore Capito, when asked about West Virginia’s jails conditions during a media briefing last week, drew connections between the staffing problems and the environment for incarcerated people.
“Here’s the main problem in my view: We can’t find enough people to work in the correctional systems in the state level or the federal level. So you have a strained workforce. You have people doing jobs that they were not hired for. You’re low pay, long hours in difficult situations. That’s not to excuse inhumane conditions, no – but you can see that it all becomes part of a system that then deteriorates over time,” said Capito, R-W.Va.
Gov. Jim Justice declared the staffing emergency in the jails and then authorized the National Guard to perform support functions. During two different legislative sessions, Justice submitted bills intended to address jail worker pay but the legislation did not advance. Unlike some of the governor’s other legislative priorities, there were not town halls or weekly breakfast meetings to encourage legislative movement.
“If we were really fair, I have sent it up for two years. Now we have got to address this,” Justice said again at an Oct. 13 briefing with reporters. “We have to absolutely take care of those folks that are in our jails. It is our obligation to do that. So we still are in a state of emergency, and I’m confident now. Now we’ve gotten everybody’s attention. And now we’ll get there. We’ll get there with stuff that will make real, real, real progress.”
The governor and his chief of staff have been involved in a standoff over whether they should be deposed in the class action lawsuit over jail conditions. That matter has been put on hold while the magistrate judge assesses whether their sworn testimony is necessary.
At a briefing Oct. 26, the governor said he would be glad to provide testimony but that he has little to add.
“I would welcome anyone at any time to swear me in to doing sworn testimony,” Justice said. “But we don’t want to do something that’s an absolute, teetotal waste of time over something that I don’t know anything about.
“There’s no point in going in and sitting there and letting someone grandstand, some lawyer, so they can get their name in the newspaper to basically haul the governor in there to have the governor say ‘I don’t know anything about this, and I can’t help you with anything. I can say that right now. If that be the case, and that’s what we can do to make people feel better, then I’ll be glad to do it.”
This past January, as the Burks family struggled to gain answers about the 37-year-old’s death, Kimberly Burks confronted the governor at a town hall meeting that was actually about a proposal to cut income taxes.
“I have not received a phone call from the state, from the police department or anybody acknowledging that something happened to my son at the (Southern Regional Jail),” Burks told the governor, according to coverage by Beckley’s Register-Herald newspaper.
Burks then took aim at a state Homeland Security investigation that concluded allegations of water deprivation, failure to provide toilet paper, and inmates having to sleep on hard floors without a mattress are false.
“They reported it back to you and you made your statement that they found nothing wrong with the conditions of that jail. And that was a lie,” Burks told the governor.
The governor responded in a back-and-forth by saying, “I have addressed this 15 different times … And I have absolutely said it and I’ll say it till I go to my grave and that is just as simple as this. We have investigated and investigated, and we will continue to do whatever we got to do because with what you’re saying – and I’ve gotta be just dead level honest – with some level of smoke there has to be some level of fire.”
This past week, outside the federal courthouse in Beckley, Burks was still not satisfied.
She continued to call out the governor and retired Homeland Security Secretary Jeff Sandy.
“Jim Justice knew this. Jeff Sandy knew this,” she said. “They all knew it, and they all tried to cover it up.”