Colorado authorities were barred from using drugs as evidence in a case against an inmate who had swallowed them after a judge said authorities kept him shackled too long before administering a laxative to help purge the smuggled methamphetamine.
Prison officials subjected the inmate to 17 strip searches and forced him to sit on a padded chair under constant vigil for 5 1/2 days as they waited for drugs he had swallowed.
District Judge Charles Barton ruled that the baggies of meth eventually produced by Brian Willert were inadmissible because they were obtained through an unreasonable search.
Barton’s ruling said that Buena Vista Correctional Facility guards used risky and unproved methods between June 17 and June 24, 2005, to extract the evidence. Guards kept him in a sleepless state when they could have quickly given him a laxative, he said.
“The laxative was administered only after an unnecessarily prolonged period of confinement to the chair,” Barton wrote.
The Department of Corrections has ordered a review by the state inspector general’s office, said Patti Miccichi, DOC spokeswoman.
“They will see if staff followed procedures or if they went too far,” Miccichi said.
But she added that Willert, who was paroled after the incident, has since violated parole and faces new attempted-escape charges. He also faces drug-possession charges.
Authorities segregated Willert after his girlfriend reported to prison authorities that she passed drugs to Willert as she kissed him during a visit.
“Even after defendant sought medical assistance to pass the contraband, such assistance was denied for some unknown reason,” Barton said. This, even though another inmate had previously died when a baggie of drugs burst inside of him, he noted.
Barton ruled that although Willert did not object to receiving a laxative, he did not give consent for officials to take the material produced for investigative purposes. A prison officer had ordered the medication to “speed things up.”
Staff writer Kirk Mitchell can be reached at 303-820-1206 or kmitchell@denverpost.com.
This story has been corrected in this online archive. Originally, due to a reporting error, the last name of a judge was mistakenly used instead of inmate Brian Willert’s name in the eighth paragraph of the story.
