Another mistrial for former Jackson County jail guard accused of attacking inmate

A mistrial was declared Thursday for the second time in the prosecution of a former Jackson County jail guard who stomped 12 times on a shackled inmate’s head.

Young Isinwa, 46, had faced a maximum of 10 years in federal prison and a $250,000 fine if convicted in the October 2011 attack, which was recorded on jailhouse video.

But after a day and a half of deliberation, a federal jury was unable to come to a unanimous decision, prompting U.S. District Judge Beth Phillips to declare a mistrial.

Another jury also failed to reach a verdict when the case was first heard in August. The retrial began Monday and the jury began its deliberation Wednesday afternoon.

At both trials, Isinwa testified that he’d delivered the kicks in self defense because the detainee said he was HIV-positive and was trying to bite him.

But prosecutors said the attack was the result of Isinwa’s frustration with an unruly inmate and wanting to “teach him a lesson” about the consequences of disobeying orders.

“There is absolutely no justification for his action,” assistant U.S. Attorney David Ketchmark said in his closing remarks on Wednesday. “It is unreasonable. It is unnecessary.”

But Isinwa’s attorney, assistant federal defender Travis Poindexter, said his client was not a hothead and had not previously been violent toward prisoners.

“This was a very unique, isolated incident,” he said.

The U.S. attorney’s office hasn’t decided whether to seek a third prosecution, a spokesman said.

Isinwa was charged with depriving Mario Fue, 33 of his civil rights. Fue, who was awaiting trial at the time of the attack, is now serving time in a Missouri prison for robbery.

This was the first of what could be more criminal cases filed in connection with allegations that corrections officers used excessive force against inmates at the Jackson County Detention Center in downtown Kansas City.

No additional charges have been filed against other guards. But the same month that the government announced Isinwa’s indictment, in July 2015, county officials learned that the FBI was investigating other instances where guards had allegedly used excessive force at the jail, 1300 Cherry St.

The county’s corrections department had by that time already begun its own investigation separate from the FBI’s. Video recordings showed four instances in 2015 where guards used more force than necessary to restrain inmates, county officials said.

In the worst of those incidents, an inmate was hospitalized with broken ribs, a punctured lung and other injuries.

A married father of five, Isinwa emigrated to the United States from Nigeria in April 2009. Despite having two post-graduate degrees in psychology, he was unable to find work in his field and was working at a fast-food restaurant when a friend encouraged him to become a Jackson County corrections officer because it paid better.

He began work at the detention center in February 2010 but was fired 18 months later, after supervisors reviewed a video showing Isinwa kicking Fue in the head repeatedly as he lay on his belly in chains. Fue was hospitalized, but not seriously injured.

According to Isinwa, the men struggled after Fue knocked him to the ground. He admitted kicking Fue in the head but said it was in self defense.

Prosecutors said Isinwa was in no danger and should have called for help.

This story was originally published February 9, 2017 at 4:55 PM with the headline "Another mistrial for former Jackson County jail guard accused of attacking inmate."