Consider This from NPR - BONUS: The Blind Spot

Episode Date: April 3, 2022

Roger Latimer says he was beaten by guards in a security camera blind spot at Western Illinois Correctional Center. He complained at the prison. He complained to local officials. He asked medical staff to take pictures. Nothing happened. Then another prisoner, Larry Earvin, died after an altercation with guards in the same blind spot.In this episode of WBEZ Chicago's Motive podcast, host Shannon Heffernan tracks the pattern of beatings in that blind spot, surfacing nine additional cases, sometimes involving the same guards, using very similar behavior in the same location. We ask the question of why this pattern persisted, even as prisoners like Latimer tried to stop it.Season 4 of Motive investigates the hidden world of big prisons in small towns. Places where everyone knows each other and difficult truths get buried.Listen to Motive on Apple podcasts and Spotify.Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoicesNPR Privacy Policy

Support for NPR comes from NPR member stations and Eric and Wendy Schmidt through the Schmidt Family Foundation, working toward a healthy, resilient, secure world for all on the web at theschmidt.org. Hey, Consider This listeners, Elsa Chang here with an episode from our friends over at WBEZ Chicago and their podcast Motive. In their newest season, they're investigating what happens behind the walls of small-town prisons, a world that is usually completely hidden. They discovered stories of violence and cover-ups and the complicated, intertwined lives

of prisoners, guards, and staff. Here's the host of Motive, Shannon Hefferman. A quick warning. This podcast has descriptions of violence. Can you walk me through what happened that day? Yeah. Several inmates had assaulted correctional staff in Western Illinois, which caused a statewide shake there. In September of 2017, Vinoco Washington was locked up at Western Illinois Correctional Center in Mount Sterling, Illinois. Guards from all across the state came to the prison to do a search for contraband. Washington says things with staff had been particularly tense. And after the search, some guards came back to his wing. And they started using their sticks, banging on the doors,

telling everybody to get up and step out of the cells. Washington says guards lined up around the cell house. One of the officers stood in the middle. He started making a speech. You motherfuckers starting to believe that y'all gonna put y'all hands on us and get away with it? That's bullshit, man. We going back to cracking heads like we was doing in the old times. He further says that only cowards bully on and intimidate people who they feel

cannot fight them back. I started laughing. It was an uncontrolled urge. I started laughing. It was uncontrolled urge. I just laughed. Laughing because the guards had shields, helmets, and sticks. Washington says the guard making the speech

called him to the front of the wing. All of the tactical officers, they all simultaneously stepped forward, you know, in a ready position and made their battle cry. The guard making the speech got in Washington's face. And he says, what the fuck's so funny? And I said, man, look, you just said only cowards bully and intimidate on people who can't fight them back. Man, I'm handicapped. I got one hand, and I go home in a year.

I'm not trying to fight you. And his words to me then were, you just fucked up. Washington says the guards cuffed him. Because he only has one hand, they chained that hand to his waist. Then some guards escorted him to segregation. SEC, a part of the prison where you go if you're in trouble.

There are lots of cameras in prisons. But there's an area in Western without any. And Washington says guards know it. Whatever's not seen on the camera, you know, in the court of law is not truth. Washington says the guards beat him. Beat him right in that spot with no cameras, between two doors and the entryway to sick. I'm just having a hard time visualizing it. Would you be able to draw it? There's no camera there. The only camera there is the officer.

Inside of this door, these sliding doors, it's a blind spot. I asked the Department of Corrections about this alleged beating, but they wouldn't answer any questions. In a lawsuit, the guards deny wrongdoing and the case was dismissed. I've been reporting on prisons for years now. The prison system, I'm sure I don't have to tell you, is huge. Chances are, just statistically, that a lot of you know someone who's been locked inside. Or maybe you've been locked up yourself. And something that big, that fundamental to how society functions, can start to feel normal, like just the way it is.

So people simply stop looking. Prisons are full of blind spots. Places with no cameras, but also all kinds of other ways things are hidden. The staff is hesitant to talk. Government officials deny documents for security reasons. Prisons are often far away from big cities, hard to get to for lots of loved ones. And letters and calls to family or journalists are monitored, sometimes censored. It's a good place to try and hide something. So this season on Motive, we are craning our necks and trying to see inside one prison system,

the Illinois Department of Corrections. I'm going to share multiple stories, inside and outside the walls. Sometimes people will reappear and stories will overlap. But we start with one investigation about a tiny corner of an Illinois prison and what will overlap. But we start with one investigation about a tiny corner of an Illinois prison and what happened there. From WBEZ Chicago, I'm Shannon Heffernan, and this is Motive.

Episode one, The Blind Spot. How long have you lived here? Um, gee, about, let's see, I guess a year and a half. Roger Latimer is white and in his 50s. He lives in a suburb just outside of Chicago. His apartment is compact and neat. When I visited him, he'd been out of prison for about a year and a half. There was a tidy plate of cookies set out for me. Could we scoot a little closer?

Latimer is a big guy, and he's perched on this tiny chair, fiddling with the buttons on his shirt. He told me that he sometimes gets nervous around people. He's autistic and said he can get overwhelmed. You know, back when I went to school, people didn't understand high-functioning autism. It's okay to try to trip them in the hallway or, you know, it's like just being bullied. Latimer spent two and a half years in prison, some of that time at Western Illinois Correctional Center. He says one morning there, he woke up feeling dizzy. He thought some food might help, and he was scheduled to go to commissary. But by the time he got up and out of his cell, a guard told him he was too late. He'd missed his

chance to go buy a snack. The guard told Latimer to go back to his cell. I said, I don't think you understand. I'm not even sure I can go back to my cell. They said, well, you got to go to your cell. And I said, no, I think I really need to see medical. In documents, prison staff say Latimer lunged at an officer. So they grabbed him and, quote, guided him to the ground. Latimer says he didn't lunge. He just argued with him. But he says he does sometimes have trouble with social cues. So maybe he moved in a way that was unintentionally threatening.

But either way, at this point, correctional officers cuff him and take Latimer to seg. My hands are handcuffed behind me and they're lifting up my arms. People call that the chicken walk. You're bent over in a bow. They're just walking me faster and faster. And I said, I can't keep up this pace. They're pulling the handcuffs to make me like fall over. And the torture of knowing that your head is going to hit the cement. At some point, I fall on the cement. That didn't stop them from keeping up the pace. Latimer says guards dragged him down the sidewalk

until they arrived at the doors in front of segregation. They opened the first door, but then there's a second door behind the first one. So he's between two doors in a kind of foyer. That's when I was pushed really hard again onto the floor this time. It was quite obvious that it was done to be outside of the range of cameras. At that point, the officer on the left starts kicking me with his boots over and over again. It was very terrifying. I thought I was, this is the way I die, is I just, I get kicked to death. He says guards picked him up and slammed his shoulder right into the doorway.

Latimer says he was in terrible shape, bleeding, clothes ripped. Later that day, staff called an ambulance, and Latimer went to an outside hospital. According to medical documents, staff treated him for four rib fractures. He was bruised and had a concussion. After he's treated, the guards take him back to prison and put him in segregation, where he doesn't have access to a phone. I have no way of reaching out to my family. I mean, nobody will never know the truth. I was worried not only for myself, but I was, you know, is this what goes on? Latimer did everything he could to

document what he said happened to him. He talked to internal affairs, Department of Correction staff that investigate problems behind bars. He wrote a grievance, official forms incarcerated people can fill out to file complaints. And he tried to tell people outside the prison, too. Like his lawyer, David Kirstein. Kirstein was scheduled to come talk to Latimer about his conviction and sentence. He was new to the case and wanted to see him face to face. At this point, the lawyer doesn't even know about the alleged beating. That's not the point of this legal visit.

He drove to Western from just outside Chicago. A long drive. I was told that I had to be there at a very unusual time, seven in the morning. So I had left literally at one in the morning to get there, to make it there by seven. But once he got there, Kirstein says the guard told him,

sorry, we have no record of your meeting. So wait a minute, wait a minute. I have an arrangement. I have an appointment. I drove here all night. Let me in. What's the big deal? I was angry.

There was no question I was angry. And what are you thinking is happening? At this point, do you think it's just a mix-up? I think that just somebody screwed up and they didn't get things to go through and now they're stuck with me over here. Kirstein raised hell. And staff said, okay, okay, we'll check. Kirstein says he ended up waiting for four hours until finally the guard came back and said, we'll let you meet with your client, but a guard is going to watch the whole time. And I thought that was totally inappropriate.

There's attorney-client privilege. You have a fundamental right to absolutely have your client have an unfettered access to you to speak about the way that he feels without having anyone who knows about what's going on. I was angry, but I came this far, and I'm not going to go away until he happened. So Kirstein reluctantly agreed to the condition. He says he was allowed to talk to Latimer, but a guard was there about 10 feet away. As soon as I saw Roger, I knew that he had some sort of issues. I don't want to say the incorrect thing. I couldn't diagnose him,

but I do know that his ability to talk in a guarded way, it wasn't going to happen. There was no, what I would call, a filter. You know, he, I didn't have a face-to-face. I was still behind this plexiglass. So then I talked to him, told him this whole story. The story of the beating, which, remember, was not what Christine was expecting to talk about. He kept trying to guide Latimer back to talk about his sentence. The lawyer was very aware of the guard right nearby. While we're talking about the case, it always returned to one thing. Do you know that I got beaten up? Do you know that I got this and that? And I'm saying, okay, I'll check it out. I'll check it out. I went to the hospital

for treatment. So that should have been, first of all, treatment of what? That should have been the first question. But you're listening, you're taking the information in, you hear that something trying to be respectful at the same time, knowing that I got somebody over there listening 10 feet away and knowing that I have a potential client that doesn't have a filter. At the beginning of the incident, when I'm in the housing unit, I don't have any injuries, and somehow I get these injuries, and I'm brought for treatment. He's in anguish.

He's in both physical pain and he's in mental pain, too. Nobody believes me. Nobody cares about me. And he feels like the guards are just snickering at him and just trying to mock him. He realizes he's an easy target and nobody else is going to do anything about him. As Christine is hearing Latimer talk,

he's trying to sort it out, trying to decide if he believes him about the beating and the injuries. So then afterwards I said, look, you know, to the guards later, can you show me there's any medical history? Can you show me any stuff to verify? And there's nothing.

And there's nothing. So I'm thinking to myself, okay, I don't know if this is fascination and retrospect, because to me it's just unworldly that there would be no medical report whatsoever. Kirstein said he called some of the local hospitals, but couldn't get any information about Latimer having treatment. He also reached out to civil rights lawyers to tell them about Latimer. But without better documentation, he said there wasn't much he could do. I get people who tell me all sorts of things happen to them, and you hear it, and you got to say, okay, it's like trust but verify, and I got no verification.

When it comes down to it, the official word, whatever staff says, usually stands. Latimer knows that. He was in prison. And he has a conviction that he knows once some people hear about, they will just automatically dismiss him.

Possession of child pornography. He says he's innocent. Honestly, I don't know if that's true. And I'm not going to go down some true crime rabbit hole here. Did he or didn't he? Yes, there are innocent people in prison. But there's also people who've done really bad things. They've all been convicted. They've all been sentenced. None of them deserve to be beaten. Latimer got transferred to another prison not long after the alleged beating. He was relieved to be out of Western, but he was still determined to get the word out about what happened.

So he's talking about it all the time. On the bus when he's getting transferred, to other guys in nearby cells. And he says he ended up meeting someone who told him that he, too, was beaten in a blind spot at Western. When I talked to Latimer, he didn't remember the guy's name. But he described him. A black guy with one hand. Whatever's not seen on the camera, you know, in the court of law is not truthful. I'd heard Vinoco Washington's story about a year before I met Roger Latimer.

He's the guy from the beginning of the episode. The alleged beatings of Latimer and Washington were just four days apart in 2017. And when I heard Latimer bring Washington up, it starts to click into place for me. The similarities between their stories, the location. So there's two doors that leads to the segregation unit. They opened the first door and then that's when I was pushed really hard again onto the floor. This time, it was quite obvious that it was done, you know, to be outside of the range of cameras. The guards slamming their bodies into the doors as they're being transported. That's when they started using me as a battering ram, slamming my head up against the walls

and the door. Oops, I'm sorry. Oops, I'm sorry. He pulls me suddenly and then bangs my shoulder into the doorway. Being restrained in handcuffs and kicked in the ribs. They opened me up. I had a footprint in my chest. My arm is on fire.

I'm like crying. I can't do anything. I'm more hurt than anything because I can't defend myself. And it's clicking into place for Latimer, too. The question, too, is how many other people

have been beaten? I mean, how often does this happen society looks at us like you know we deserved it you know he's a prisoner he in jail for something what's going to prevent this from happening to other people so so like people need to be aware of this this can happen to another person and it's only in extreme and severe cases that something is brought to attention or something is being said when they kill someone. When they kill someone, could that have happened? A man named Larry Irvin died in the summer of 2018, less than a year after Washington and Latimer say they were beaten. He was a 65-year-old Black man. The medical examiner's report listed the cause of death

as homicide after a, quote, altercation with guards. He had 15 rib fractures and a punctured colon. Prison documents show he was handcuffed and being transferred to segregation. Whatever happened to him and whatever caused his injuries, it happened in a place with no cameras. After the break, what happened to Larry Irvin? Hey, Consider This listeners. I'm Shannon Heffernan. You're listening to a sample episode from the Motive podcast by WBEZ Chicago. This is just one of seven stories from across the Illinois prison system. This season of the Motive podcast goes behind the walls, exposing violence and cover-ups,

and asking big questions about the role of incarceration. If you're engaged with the reporting in this episode, you'll definitely want to check out the others. Subscribe to Motive wherever you get your podcasts so you don't miss it. On average, about 100 people die in Illinois prisons every year. And the amount of information on how they die, it's scarce. There's a new state law that's supposed to change that. But historically, documents we got from the prison often failed to even note the cause of death. I say this to say prison deaths, even when they may involve bad medical care, violence between cellmates or from staff, it's been another one of those blind spots. So when I got a call from someone telling me about Larry Irvin's death after an altercation with guards, I was determined to learn more.

To know what happened to this man, but also if it was part of something bigger, a pattern. And if it was, why no one did anything about it before Irvin died. How did that happen? One of the first documents we got about Irvin's death in prison was his autopsy. Almost half his ribs were fractured. And he had injuries everywhere. His face, his arms, even his toes. I obviously couldn't interview Irvin to see if his story was like Roger Latimer's or Finoco Washington's.

So instead, I tried to track down witnesses from Western Illinois Correctional Center. Can you tell me your name and let me know if you want me to use your name or keep your name anonymous? My name is Willie Smith, ID number ENI 3078. Thank you to know. You're not worried about retaliation? I'm insured and I don't think they're going to retaliate here insured. I'd found Smith because I'd heard people who witnessed the Irvin incident were moved out of Western. And Smith's name was on the transfer list. So tell me what you saw.

Well, I didn't see the stripes, because they had already been there. I've seen the after effect. You were in the cell across from him? Right across from him. Directly across. To be honest, he was, I was like, you gotta be sitting. But I said, that's what they did to that little, that little man? Another witness told me he was bloody and his clothes were ripped. And according to a prison nurse's report, Irvin was vomiting. They literally beat the living hell out of him. And you can see that it looked like he had a fight with a fucking Mack truck.

A fight with a fucking Mack truck. Prison incident reports show Irvin had just been transported to SIG, just like Latimer in Washington. Officers say Irvin was moved because he bit a guard. The officers' reports say Irvin was resisting, refusing to walk. Those officer reports also say he was transferred, quote, without further incident. They don't know anything major that could result in big injuries. Staff reported that once in seg, Irvin was treated for pepper spray, some scratches and bruises, which, considering his autopsy, seemed weird.

When there's accusations of law enforcement abuse and you want to prove what happened, it can feel like these days you've got to have video. When there's accusations of law enforcement abuse and you want to prove what happened, it can feel like these days you've got to have video. Like that's the truth, the ultimate objectivity. But almost any video taken inside a prison is a video that was taken by the prison. Cameras they placed and had control over. We fought with the state to get security footage from that day. It took over a year and help from lawyers.

We eventually got videos from security cameras throughout the prison. The first video is inside the cell house. You see some guards walk up to Irvin. He's sitting at a table. The video is from far away and the view is obstructed. Then you see a bit of commotion, shuffling feet. It's not clear enough to know if Irvin actually did anything to guards, like bite them. Then, suddenly, over a dozen guards rush onto the wing and cuff Irvin. There's a guard holding onto each side of him. They take Irvin away. A different security camera picks up here, outside on the sidewalk on the way to Seg. In this video, it looks like Irvin is having

trouble keeping up with guards. They're holding his arms up behind his back. He's bent forward, looking at the ground, just like the chicken walk Latimer described. At some point, his pants fall around his ankles. A guard grabs them and throws them into the grass. It's an odd moment. They keep moving. Then, the next camera. Still outside.

The video shows Irvin walking with multiple guards into the segregation building. And that's it. Now he's in the blind spot. No cameras. I can't see him. The next time there's a video of Irvin, he's on a stretcher, being carried to an ambulance. I wanted to get the perspective of prison staff on all of this. I reached out to the Department of Corrections.

Despite years of requests for an interview, IDOC officials only provided the most basic written statements about Irvin's death, saying things like they launched an immediate investigation and placed staff on leave. I also reached out to individual staff, but none of them would go on record. What I have instead of interviews with staff are reports they wrote that week. Most are fairly bland, but a couple stuck out to me. One report is from officers who guarded Irvin

while he was at the hospital. They say guards at Western told them that Irvin had assaulted staff and, quote, got what he had coming. Another official report is about a staff member who told another staff member she'd known about incidents in SAC, guards beating people in a spot without cameras. She said one of the guards, a guy named Blake Halbrick,

cornered her and basically told her to stay out of what goes on down there. She also said she believed guards had once beat up a guy just because they were bored. A year and a half after the alleged beating, the feds brought charges against three guards, Todd Scheffler, Alex Banta, and Willie Hedden. They were charged with violating Irvin's right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment when they beat him to death. They were also charged with lying to police and falsifying reports. None of them would talk to us. Hedden has since pleaded guilty.

Scheffler and Banta have pleaded not guilty and are on trial. But what if someone from the state had done something before Larry Irvin's death? Because the warning signs were all there. Roger Latimer saw them. It was like, gee, it sounded like he was dragged down a sidewalk and kicked into the ribs. It's like, it's like, so this is still happening. There were so many similarities between Irvin and Latimer's stories that I wondered if the same guards were involved. Latimer didn't know the name of the guards who allegedly beat him,

but we got prison paperwork. One of the officers who escorted Latimer to't know the name of the guards who allegedly beat him, but we got prison paperwork. One of the officers who escorted Latimer to Seg, Alex Banta, is also charged in Irvin's death. Another officer who transferred Latimer to Seg was named Blake Halbrick. He's not charged, but he's the same guard who the staff member said cornered her and told her to stay out of what goes on in Seg. It's so upsetting because I tried to reach out. Roger got a hold of me and told me that the same people that were involved with him are now on trial for murder. For murder. The charges aren't technically for murder, but these men are facing trial because Irvin died from the alleged beating. When lawyer David Kirstein heard about Irvin's death, he thought back to the day when he visited Latimer at Western.

The way the guards tried to keep him from seeing Latimer. The way they told him there was no record of Latimer complaining or even going to an outside hospital. By this point, Latimer was out of prison, and he'd gotten access to his hospital records. He showed them to Kirstein. As soon as I saw the record, I saw fractures. And that, to me, there's no way that he didn't go to a hospital without them knowing about it at that time. He's in jail. He's in custody. It had to be done. It had to be known by everybody in that place.

Everyone, from the supervisor to the warden, all the way up. Latimer gave me a copy of this hospital medical report. It has notes from a nurse, someone outside the prison. In addition to showing the injuries, four rib fractures and other various abrasions, there was something else. The nurse had written that Latimer wanted to make a police report about the alleged beating, and that she and another nurse had tried to take pictures of Latimer's injuries.

I did say, please take the pictures. I definitely do want the pictures taken. And I was very adamant about, yes, please take the pictures. But the guards stopped the nurses. No, they said, absolutely no pictures, no pictures. It seemed like the nurse was sort of... The nurse wrote that the guards told the nurses. No, they said, absolutely no pictures, no pictures. It seemed like the nurse was sort of— The nurse wrote that the guards told her, quote, There will be no pictures taken.

We have spoken to the major at the prison twice, and he says no pictures. If he, the patient, keeps talking about filing a report, we are to take him back to the prison, and he will be taken care of in the infirmary. The patient stated, they are just trying to cover this up. No one will know what they did to me if you don't take the pictures. End quote. Like I'm a property of the state somehow. They have no right to take these pictures.

And then we'll take our own pictures. The nurse also wrote that prison staff told her that a Department of Corrections investigator would be looking into the beating accusations. And an investigator did open a report and did take pictures for the prison. But he never finished his report. I saw the notes in the file. That investigator said he was working on other cases and overwhelmed. Latimer's convinced this is just one more way it got swept under the rug.

I was told that, you know, hey, this prison is in this small town area. Everybody knows everybody. You know, that's kind of a family thing. And it's hard really for anybody to go against that. This was systematic. This was guards who covered for guards. They clearly lied to me all the expense of truly somebody who was a victim. At one point, you stop being a criminal and you stop becoming a victim. And now I'm angry at myself for not feeling quite so compelled to do something about it. I screwed up. I should have believed this guy.

I should have done something well earlier on that I didn't do. And I'm upset for myself for not going forward. I've been thinking about what Christine said. The part about, at one point you stop being a criminal and you start becoming a victim. It's easy to think of those two words, victim and criminal, as identities.

Are you this or are you that? But most people who've done something wrong have also been wronged. You switch which role you're in over and over again. To solidify those as something you are or aren't, it makes it easier to not think about what happens to people in prison. I think it's one of the reasons all this was ignored by so many people until someone died. Latimer tried to get people to listen. He wrote a grievance about his alleged beating.

He reported it to Internal Affairs, asked the nurse to take photos of his injuries. And there's one more person he reached out to that we haven't talked about yet, Mark Vincent. He's the elected prosecutor in Brown County, where Western Illinois Prison is located. It's his job to prosecute crimes like murder and robberies, or assaults, whether they're in a bar or the prison. Yes, I know Mr. Latimer. He has reached out to me. He had enough evidence that made his allegations appear quite credible to me.

But Vincent never brought charges. He handed it along to the feds, who so far have also passed. Vincent didn't want to talk much about Latimer's case, but he did talk to me more generally about being a prosecutor in a tiny prison town. I just, you know, I don't want to participate in any kind of hit piece because I think the vast majority of everyone is trying to do their best. It's a difficult industry to do corrections in general. Do you have much family or friends who work at the prison? I imagine in a fairly small town, there's a lot of connections you'd have.

Oh yeah, I know many people there at the prison. My brother retired as a correctional lieutenant. I have a sister-in-law who works there, and also my wife is the superintendent of industries there. They have a meat processing plant there. Vincent says he does get complaints about abuse from people locked up at Western. He says these cases are hard to pursue for a bunch of reasons. A big one, his office is small and he doesn't have many resources. So he basically relies on the prison's own investigations. He says getting information or quality video out of the prison, it's hard. Also, any case he brings, he's going to be doing that with jurors in a prison town.

To put an inmate's word against the word of a guard? He says in those cases, you're always going to have reasonable doubt. They're just honestly not worth pursuing. There's no need to pursue them because there would never be any legal outcome, any prosecution to be had. I went looking for other cases to see exactly how big the blind spot pattern might be, to see how many people had stories like Washington, Irvin, and Latimer. I found eight additional prisoners who said they were beaten on their way to segregation at Western. Most of the victims are Black. Five include at least one of the guards indicted in Irvin's death. In one case, records show a man had multiple fractures to his face and required surgery.

In another case, Internal Affairs did an investigation. And one of their findings? Surprise. There's a blind spot right outside SAG. That was an incident from 2016, about two years before Irvin was allegedly beaten to death by guards. So this blind spot, it was known to the prison, officially documented, with plenty of time to act before a man died. In three of the cases I found, the state paid to settle lawsuits. The largest payout was $17,500. The Department of Corrections declined to answer questions because of the pending litigation. In a written statement, they said they've now installed cameras in the area we identified as a blind spot.

But they still insist that that video footage should not be available to journalists and the public. As I was reporting this story, I thought a lot about Larry Irvin. After his death, I spent time plowing through his records, reading these medical reports that detail every inch of his body. It felt intimate, almost like a violation, because, of course, I'm a stranger. Records show Irvin had been in and out of prison since the 80s. The most recent crime, the one that had landed him in Western, was for robbery of $11.

He was homeless and he'd stolen a couple of watches and was selling them on the street. But then when a woman tried to buy them, Irvin grabbed the money and slapped her hand away. When Irvin died, he was three months away from a scheduled release. It took me a while to track down someone who knew Larry Irvin. A lot of his family hadn't heard from him for years. That's not uncommon. When people are in and out of prison, it's hard for the people who love them to stay in touch.

Finally, I found Willie Irvin, one of Larry's seven siblings, the oldest. It just baffled me when I heard, and I knew he was getting out soon. You don't really know what to say about it. You know, you can't bring anybody back. Larry grew up in Chicago. Larry was probably my mother's favorite. He was real nice, fun, loving, outgoing. He never met an enemy, always had friends.

You know, people were always around him. You know, some people have that outward personality. Willie said his brother had mental illness. When Larry got out of prison, the state would often send him to these group homes. You know, he'd get back in a little more trouble, and he'd back in for a couple years and back to a group home. And so that kind of became his lifestyle. A couple times I would find out where the group home was and go visit him you know he wasn't uh you know it wasn't all a whole lot of chit chat because you know i guess he probably was on medication we knew each other and it was like we knew each other like

strangers and you know you can't say well how you doing Because I see where you are. So that kind of stuff, you don't, it's hard to bring up a subject. Your life situation is in that, you know, that stage. Willie's aunt is the one who told him his brother Larry had gotten hurt while in prison. I was told that he was beaten severely. And they sent pictures of him laying in the hospital bed, his feet chained to the bed, and he did not survive from that point. So he was my brother and didn't deserve that treatment. And none of us do. None of us do. There wasn't a funeral as far as Willie knows,

and he doesn't know who buried his brother. But the family learned he was laid to rest in a small town in southern Illinois. Probably doesn't have a name on most maps. Willie went to visit Larry's grave with some of his family. And we were told where it was, and there was no marker. I guess the disgusting thing is you'd be the prison to death and put him in a sanitary in an unmarked grave. You would at least put a marker as where he was. Two of the guards who were accused of Irvin's death are on trial.

And one can view this, I guess, as a kind of justice, a potential resolution. Because when we think about guards or police or honestly any profession, it's easy to think if we just get these specific guys out, it'll be okay. You know the cliche, the bad apples. It's a phrase used so much it's corny at this point. But beyond being overused, it's also maybe, I don't know, not helpful. Because when I think about Larry Ervin lying in an unmarked grave, I think about all the warning signs that went ignored. All the systems that allowed a death like his to happen. And all the people working day to day in ways that to them must seem entirely normal and benign.

Not the bad apples. The whole orchard. Which is why on this season of Motive, you're going to hear a bunch of different stories. Not just about Irvin. From all over the Illinois Department of Corrections. Sometimes they connect together, tangled like the system itself. We're going to go to small town parades and hear low-budget music videos, as rural towns compete to win prisons and get jobs. This is the season to find out the reason, is we is or is we isn't going to get ourselves

a prison. We're going to go to a courthouse and see how judges and prosecutors elected in prison towns shape the way the prison functions. So he went in for seven years and all of a sudden he's not coming home for 100 years.

And what in the hell happened that got us to that point? We're going to hear a guard talk about plans to abuse prisoners and cover it up. She said we were going to go into a cell and whoop up on them. And she was going to have me bite her to make it look like he did it. Next week, we get to hear from two women determined to make things better from the inside out. And what happens when they go behind the wall.

The inmates used to tell me that the guards were talking about following me home. And so they started telling me, stop taking up for us, Ms. Bates. Stop advocating for us. They're going to come after you. And I would tell them, I want them to come after me. Motive is a production of WBEZ Chicago. I'm Shannon Heffernan. The producers for today's episode were Colin McNulty and Jesse Dukes. Marie Mendoza is our associate producer.

Joe Disseau mixed this episode. Nicole Posalka is our fact checker. Our editor is Rob Wildeboer. Our executive producer is Kevin Dawson. Thank you. Jeff Coleman, Emma O'Connor, and David Sanders at Jenner & Block. Without their legal work, this reporting would not be possible. And our thanks to ProPublica. Some of the reporting for this podcast was developed during my participation in their local reporting network. Thanks to everyone who listened to early versions and gave feedback, including Sylvia Goodman, Natalie Moore, Alexandra Solomon, Patrick Smith, Johans LaCour, Jenny Costas, Sarah Geis, Katie Mingle, and Noah Leposki. And always, special thanks to listeners, whose financial support of WPEZ made this podcast possible. Thank you. and peace. More information at carnegie.org.