Pleading for lenience, a 36-year-old convict told a federal judge Thursday that when another inmate called him a vulgarity he had no choice but to pummel the inmate nearly to death with steel locks because if he didn’t do so, other convicts would attack him.
Timothy Stagner argued he was simply abiding by a rule established by inmate culture within the U.S. Penitentiary in Florence.
Judge Christine M. Arguello rejected the argument in United States District Court in Denver and sentenced Stagner to 8 additional years in prison after he completes the 4 years he is already serving on a burglary from Missouri. The sentence was at the top of the range for assaulting an inmate.
Stagner’s head was shaved and the back darkened with a large tattoo emblazoned with a design and the words “Skin Head.”
Stagner attacked the elderly inmate May 12, 2015 because the other man owed him $75 and had called him a profanity.
Stagner told the judge that every day in prison he faces violence, adding that he had already been stabbed twice with shanks.
“I try to stay out of trouble. My history reflects that,” he said.
Before Stagner was sentenced, his attorney, David Johnson, told Arguello that it would be totally different for him to be called a profanity on the street than for Stagner to be called that name in prison, where that particular vulgarity carries extra weight. The rules of that society demanded retribution or he could be targeted himself, Johnson said.
“The only thing that you have is your release date and respect,” Johnson said, asking that Stagner be sentenced to 4 years in prison.
Arguello immediately interrupted his argument.
“It is a different world because I truly don’t understand what Mr. Stagner was doing when he did it,” Arguello said.
She added that when Stagner quit beating a defenseless 68-year-old inmate with locks embedded in a belt, the elderly inmate almost died and doctors had to piece together fragments of his skull like a puzzle and hold it together with a wire mesh.
“Why the heck would he do this?” Arguello asked.
Prosecutor Valeria Spencer added that the victim’s life was saved with hundreds of thousands of taxpayer dollars during two operations and that he still received permanent brain damage. The man will spend the rest of his life in a medical prison, where his most prized diversion is strolling around a track using a walker, Spencer said.
She added that Stagner previously injured two other inmates in fights. In one of the fights, he broke another inmate’s arm.
In reply to the argument for lenience based on different prison rules, she asked whether the government was expected to just allow anarchy to reign in prisons.
