Karen Keith's Statement


I always got the impression that Karen Keith would have been happier staying with the county in Court Services. Keith gives Withey some of the answers that he is looking for and I suspect she wanted to say more, but he stopped her short. Many counties, including Marion to the south put every inmate to work that doesn’t have violent felonies, sexual battery charges, escape charges or illness, generally speaking. That was a goal of mine for years, but the defense attorney’s balked as did other participants of the circuit, so we moved very slowly in getting this operational. Included was a transition from subjective classification to objective classification. Objective classification is the norm and sanctioned by the National Institute of Corrections. I sent Keith to a seminar several years ago for us to be on the cutting edge of this new direction and she came back wanting nothing to do with it. I tasked her captain to get this done and with other fires to put out, this process was put on the back burner. I say that because Keith’s statement spends a lot of time on Brian Nagel, when in fact, there were lots of Nagels who needed to work and the antiquated process for trusty selection just slowed it even more (Keith knew this well and so did Withey.).

Interestingly, when the people from Court Services needed an inmate to fill a bed, they would take these potential trustee’s or questionable characters from jail custody and put them in the Work Release Center to work in the community without bars! Repeating, these are the same inmates that my staff didn’t want working inside our facility! So my point about trustees for the jail is easy and has always been; unless the inmate is sick or violent, we should put them to work.

I never asked Keith to manufacture gain time days that did not fall within the statutes or ordinance.

Page three: Making Brian Nagel a trusty the first time he was in jail, when Keith said I said it should be a priority, worked and went to school in the jail and got his high school diploma. Many others did too, but Withey didn’t want that information.

Page five and six: What Keith failed to mention was a conversation she had with this Jamie Osteen (the health service administrator) wherein Osteen had promised an outside appointment to Nagel’s mother. I had nothing to do with the appointment except to ask Keith to have Osteen make good on her promise or tell Nagel’s mother whether it was or was not going to happen. I had no interest either way and absolutely did not facilitate any outside appointments for any inmates, ever. That would have put the sheriff’s office in a liability position of practicing medicine without a license.

Pages seven, eight, nine and ten: Keith knows very well the situation about gain time. In fact, I was instrumental in getting an ordinance passed by the county commission as it related to gain time Gain time could be forfeited for discipline and restored at some later date with good behavior. It was a management tool. In fact, Withey, when he was a shift supervisor in security had his staff just lock up an inmate for 30 or 60 days “in the box” because forfeiting gain time was more work and paperwork. Forfeiture and restoration of gain time happened often after the ordinance was put in effect.

Pages 11 and 12: Keith would not have been privy to the decision process regarding the Jewish diet. The defense attorney, the sheriff, the jail chaplain and I decided as long as the inmate (who was disruptive often) followed the strict guidelines of his faith and fasting, we would get the food from a source other than our kitchen, because we did not have the wherewithal to provide it with the staff we had to include the dietician. This was a situation that occurred more than five years ago.

For OPS to entertain staff without also interviewing my supervisors only demonstrates their goal was to have me gone.

Click here to read Karen Keith's statement. [781 Kb]