By Jeremy Kuzmarov
On September 13, the family of Marquiel Dae’juan Ross, 24, received an email from the Oklahoma Department of Corrections (DOC) informing them that Ross had not been released, despite his being in prison past his supposed discharge date, and that he had been moved to a high security unit.
However, on September 19, they were informed that Ross, who was housed in the state penitentiary in McAlester, had died on September 12, which is when the Bigelow funeral home received his body.
Initially Ross’ family was told that Marquiel died from strangulation. However, his aunt, Rachel Macon, saw Marquiel at the Bigelow funeral home with serious injuries derived from his having been beaten to death.
State officials had planned to cremate Ross before an autopsy could be performed and have refused to release his autopsy report—it is believed because the report would show that he had been raped prior to his death.
Family disputes Oklahoma DOC’s account of prisoner death
Ross weighed only around 135 pounds and stood 5’5. At the time of his arrest, he was living in Tulsa and finishing his studies at McLean High School (he was only 19). Despite his small stature he was a great basketball player and aspired one day to become a coach.
Mr. Ross was not a violent offender but charged with being an accessory to a car-jacking, which someone else admitted to. Ross merely got in the car that was reported stolen as a passenger. His aunt Rachel Macon said that he had no knowledge that the car had been stolen; his friend had offered him a lift when he was walking down the street on a hot day and then ran away when the police came after he went into a Quick Trip to buy a snack.
Marquiel should thus never have never been charged with any crime. As a first-time offender, Mr. Ross was supposed to be given probation. Instead, he was given a two-year prison sentence because he owed $1300 in fines (which he had never been properly informed about, according to his aunt) and the judge at his hearing thought he was behaving arrogantly.
A further red flag in this case is that Mr. Ross should never have been placed in the maximum security penitentiary in McAlester with hardened criminals—especially when his slight build and gentle nature inevitably made him a target there.
Why Mr. Ross was kept in prison past his discharge date on July 15, 2024 is a further mystery along with the reason as to why the DOC then changed his date of discharge to September 12, which is the day that Marquiel was murdered.
DOC under fire for lack of transparency
Members of Ross’ family told me that they cannot get proper information from the DOC about what happened to Marquiel.
They are aware that Marquiel asked prison authorities not to be put back in a cell with the man, Justin Harris, who has now been indicted for his murder.
Also they have been told that when Marquiel was pulled out of his cell that night, he had his pants down and blood was running down his legs indicating he may have been raped. This makes the decision to place him back in a cell with Harris utterly reprehensible.
Harris was charged in Marquiel’s murder 40 days after Marquiel’s death—only after State Representative Justin J. Humphrey (R-Lane) pressed authorities about what had happened.
Nightmarish Conditions and Mismanagement
Humphrey is the head of the Oklahoma State House’s Committee on Criminal Justice and Corrections who has been on a crusade to expose abuses in Oklahoma’s correctional system along with other state services.
On October 30, Mr. Humphrey hosted a press conference at the Oklahoma Capitol building and three-hour long hearing, which spotlighted the coverup of Ross’ murder by the Oklahoma DOC and other human rights abuses taking place in Oklahoma’s prisons.
Humphrey said that he was being stonewalled in his attempt to uncover the truth about what happened to Ross and that “the Ross case is the big one that will expose the massive human rights violations and terrible problems gripping the prison system in Oklahoma.”
Humphrey, who has a background as a correctional officer, emphasized that the Ross case is “the grossest misrepresentation of justice” he had ever seen.”
It “exposes egregious injustice going on in the DOC. An inmate was killed and they are covering it up. I don’t take to calling people liars lightly, but the DOC are liars, and the people who are running it have blood on their hands.”
Prison deaths on the rise in Oklahoma
Humphrey’s assessment is corroborated by the fact that there have been over 300 deaths in Oklahoma prisons in the last 21 months, or around 15 per month, far above the total from the period before the appointment of current DOC Director Steven Harpe in October 2022.
Under Harpe’s tenure, prison wardens are losing control of their prisons to gangs due to understaffing. Drugs and other contraband have become rampant and inmates families’ are being forced to pay ransom money to prevent their loved ones from being killed.
As a form of punishment, some inmates have been placed in shower cells and cages where they have had to wallow in their own urine and feces. Women have been routinely raped in certain facilities. When information was provided to prison authorities about these rapes, they not only ignored it but fired a prison psychologist, Dr. Whitney Louis, who provided them the information.
Additionally, inmates are deprived adequate exercise time and are being fed substandard diets, causing many to become emaciated. Many facilities have major water problems causing blocked toilets and inadequate shower facilities. This is resulting in sanitation and health problems, with inmates unable to get adequate medical care.
Harpe appears to be unqualified for the task of running the DOC since he had zero experience in corrections prior to his appointment, but had worked for Governor Kevin Stitt as Chief Information Officer at Gateway Mortgage Group, which Stitt owned.
Former warden speaks out
One of the speakers at the interim study, Luke Pettigrew, is former warden of the Joseph Harp correctional center in Lexington, Oklahoma.
Pettigrew said running a business is not the same as running a correctional department because there are human lives at stake in prisons, which Harpe seems to show no consideration for.
Harpe has prided himself in introducing new business management practices embraced by the Harvard Business School and upgrading the DOC’s technology, but he is not someone who regularly visits with prison wardens and inmates to see how things are going so that he can work to help solve problems and improve prison conditions.
He has not done his due diligence further in ordering OSBI investigations when they are clearly warranted, has shown a lack of transparency, and behaves like a petty tyrant, firing anyone who disagrees with him while promoting “yes men” and women who lack the experience to run prisons effectively.
“If you don’t do what I say, you’re fired”
Meanwhile, Pettigrew was fired on spurious grounds despite having an excellent professional track record and being highly respected by employees and inmates alike. He won two court cases when he challenged his wrongful termination. Harpe has hired an upscale law firm at taxpayer expense to appeal the court decisions, preventing Pettigrew from going back to work.
Pettigrew’s lawyer, Matt Frisby, testified at the hearing that he has “noticed a change in attitude by the DOC since Harpe took charge of it in October 2022 in that they don’t like employees [like Pettigrew] that try and speak up and stand up for inmates and refuse orders even if they are wrong. The mentality now is that ‘if you don’t do what I say, you’re fired.’”
Frisby went on to note that the DOC “keeps losing its cases when it fires people (around 90%) and are wasting taxpayer resources by hiring these high-priced lawyers to carry out lengthy appeals they will likely in the end lose.”
Former prison security chief on understaffing
The next speaker after Frisby was Jason Lemons, former chief of prison security in Vinita and Medal of Valor winner with a 20+ year career working for the DOC. He chose to retire rather than to serve under Harpe.
Lemons highlighted the case of a man who was left outside for four days in 100+ degree heat in August to languish next to his own urine and feces after he refused to come inside after his yard time was over.
The normal protocol in the situation is for a team of guards to restrain the man and force him inside, however, they chose instead to punish him in a manner that could have led to his death—without facing any reprimand.
Lemons said that a main problem is that most prison facilities in Oklahoma have only a fraction of the guard staff needed to preserve safety. Guards are being forced to look after hundreds of inmates, which is an impossible task. Guard towers are also being shut down, enabling drug dealers to send in contraband via drones.
Although problems certainly existed before, Harpe has made everything much worse; according to Lemons he has “no mind for prison security” and is “getting rid of all the good people in corrections,” like Warden Pettigrew, who Lemons said is greatly respected.
Advocates sound the alarm
Emily Barnes is founder of prisoner rights advocacy group Hooked on Justice. During the interim study, she showed videos of human rights violations that had been sent to her by inmates. Barnes asked where the guards were when the abuses took place, including an incident where an inmate was savagely beaten to the point of near death.
Barnes said she has asked repeatedly for meetings with Harpe but that Harpe was a poor communicator. The purpose of the prison in her view is to rehabilitate inmates, but this is not occurring.
Barnes said that because of the spike in violent incidents, a lot of the men’s prisons are being locked down for long periods, while programs for the inmates are being cut. “There is nothing for the men to do but cause more problems.”
More Insiders Speak Out
Barnes’ remarks were followed by those of Bobby Cleveland, executive Director of the Oklahoma Correctional Officers Union.
Cleveland said that women were being turned into hookers in Oklahoma prisons and that Steven Harpe was a bully who told him at the beginning of his tenure that he would not work with him because he hated unions.
Cleveland said that Harpe continues to make a point of threatening correctional officers not to join the union while his own salary was raised to scandalously high levels. Additionally, Harpe called Cleveland and J.J. Humphrey “assholes” in public, which was indicative of his lack of professionalism.
Cleveland was followed up by Dr. Whitney Louis, a whistleblower who was fired from her position as prison psychologist at the Eddie Warrior Correctional facility in Taft. Her firing came after she reported on the rape of eight inmates, along with her own sexual assault by guards.
Prison Psychologist describes prisoner abuse
Dr. Whitney was teary-eyed when she described how she entered the prison field because she wanted to help inmates get on the right track in life. Holding a Ph.D. in Clinical Psychology, she has worked in prisons across the U.S. and was excited to come back to her home state—only to find nightmarish conditions with absolutely “disgusting things” taking place in the Sooner state.
Dr. Louis said that the inmates were treated as sub-humans by prison staff and that staff put an inmate in the same cell with the woman who murdered her own sister and refused to move her; locked two inmates in a cell for four hours with a dead body; and deprived a woman of a shower for four days because they said she needed a SANE rape exam after she had a sexual encounter with an officer.
Louis further observed discrimination being directed at Muslim and Native-American inmates. She said she had to bring in tampons for the incarcerated women because they were not being provided them; and said that one woman who was released whom she still has contact with was now in an abusive relationship because she had come to accept “being treated like dirt every day.”
Fired after reporting rapes
When Louis reported on eight rapes and her own sexual assault in a prison hallway, no investigation was carried out, and Dr. Louis was fired in January 2023.
Dr. Louis was told she was fired because she did not report on an inmate’s dream that portended a violent act, however, in reality dreams are usually symbolic, and Dr. Louis was under no professional obligation to report this.
Additionally, Dr. Louis said that it is not easy for people who have been fired to get another job and that she had to borrow thousands of dollars from her parents to support her kids while looking for another job.
Dr. Louis comes across as an extremely intelligent and compassionate woman who to this day continues to mentor inmates. She is precisely the kind of person who can help prisons live up to their potential in rehabilitating inmates—getting rid of her for reporting on rapes and other cruel practices is thus an absolute disgrace.
The removal of Luke Pettigrew is also a disgrace as he is an experienced warden with an excellent professional track record. As the last speaker at the hearing, Pettigrew said that conditions in Oklahoma prisons were worse today than in the 1970s when an inmate named Bobby Battle won a lawsuit backed by the ACLU over civil and human rights violations.
These violations included racial segregation, the punishment of detainees prior to disciplinary hearings, inhumane solitary confinement, use of chemical agents in punishment, inadequate medical care, denial of publications, and denial of opportunity to gather for religious services, which sadly are all still being carried out.
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