A former Sterling Correctional Facility inmate has sued three correctional officers claiming they beat, Tased, handcuffed and pepper sprayed him to punish him for complaining.
Inmate Michael Dicino, who has since been transferred to a Cañon City prison, sued correctional officers Zachary Aucoin, David Hollis and Jason Morrisseau claiming excessive force.
The suit filed Wednesday by Denver attorneys Jordan Factor and Anthony Converse seeks unspecified compensatory and punitive damages.
Adrienne Jacobson, spokeswoman for the Colorado Department of Corrections, said the department does not comment on ongoing litigation.
Dicino’s lawsuit said that at 7:13 p.m. on Sept. 30, 2013, he complained to Aucoin that during a search of his cell earlier in the day Aucoin had confiscated his legal papers and threatened to throw them away.
Annoyed, Aucoin ordered Dicino to stand against a wall and as he did so another officers shoved him “violently” into a door, the suit says.
At that point, Dicino, who was not resisting, was pepper sprayed, the lawsuit says
The lawsuit says that CDOC has not complied with a request for videotape of the incident, the lawsuit says. Dicino continued cooperating as officers handcuffed him behind his back, placed him in leg restraints and pepper sprayed him.
He was placed in a prone position on the floor and the defendants began beating him because “he was mouthy,” the lawsuit says.
Although he did not struggle, Aucoin deployed a Taser on Dicino’s thigh for several seconds and then did it again, the lawsuit says. Morrisseau Tasered Dicino simultaneously in the back, the suit says.
At the same time the other two deputies were shocking the inmate with their Tasers, Hollis allegedly choked Dicino for several seconds, applying pressure to DiCino’s hypoglossal nerve, the lawsuit says, adding that Dicino was finding it difficult to breathe.
“Defendants’ actions … were undertaken maliciously and sadistically to cause harm rather than in a good-faith effort to maintain or restore discipline,” the lawsuit says.
Kirk Mitchell: 303-954-1206, or
