By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson
I have been held in an empty cell and without any property or working lights since June 30, 2023.
The initial pretext for this abuse here at Virginia’s Sussex 1 State Prison (S1SP) was that I was under investigation and my belongings were to be searched by the prison’s investigators. A ‘search’ was performed and completed on July 7, 2023 (consisting of the admitted search of my confidential legal documents outside my presence which was illegal).
On July 5, 2023 I sent out a statement about this abuse and the denial of my legal property which I need to meet impending court deadlines and to prepare for a scheduled federal trial. In response, complaints were made by the public to officials. After this on July 11, I was confronted by the solitary confinement unit manager E. Green who informed me that the prison’s warden Kevin McCoy states he was having my personal belongings held “because a lot of people have been calling” about my mistreatment. This after Green had stated six days before, on July 5, in reply to a written complaint I’d filed that I would receive my legal property.
This was an admission that my things are being held as illegal retaliation for the public exercising their Constitutional rights to question, be informed about, and peacefully protest against disagreeable government practices.
So here we have 3 illegal actions compounded by officials whose role is supposed to be ‘law enforcement’: namely, unlawful conditions of solitary confinement, an unlawful search, and unlawful retaliation. Also a demonstrated effort by a prison warden to operate and commit abuses in secrecy and to suppress the public from knowing what their government is up to—a typical autocratic fascist mindset that runs counter to basic democratic principles. And it is fitting. Particularly where this warden, Kevin McCoy, originated as a guard from Red Onion State Prison (ROSP) —a Virginia prison that gained almost instant national notoriety for racism and abuse of its predominantly Black prisoner population by a totally white staff from the moment it opened in 1998.(1)
ROSP was one of two still unneeded supermax prisons (the other being Wallens Ridge State Prison) constructed in the mountains of remote racially segregated Wise County, Virginia, where all manner of overt racist abuses have been freely inflicted out of the public eye ever since.
McCoy and a series of other seasoned abusers from these Wise County prisons have been migrating to predominantly Black-staffed prisons like Sussex 1State Prison (S1SP) across the state and appointed as wardens and regional heads, where, like the old Apartheid system of South Afrika, a statewide racist regime has been entrenched, with Blacks as the rank and file abusers working under racist white administrators. This while all newly constructed Virginia prisons, like Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, are strategically located in remote racially segregated regions of the state, often in sundown towns.
This is the ethic that informs the present administration of S1SP, and the conditions of abuse I am enduring. Which only comes full circle to revive the sorts of abuses I endured, exposed and resisted for decades in Virginia’s prisons until Virginia officials had me transferred out of state in 2012 to suffer similar abuses and even efforts to have me killed in other states; only to be returned nearly a decade later when no other states would take me, to then endure Virginia officials’ efforts to kill me by deliberately leaving me with untreated prostate cancer for over a year and a half.
Of course I am not deterred and neither should you be. Public complaints should not only continue but increase.
Please share this message far and wide and make your opposition to the blatant conditions of torturous abuse of solitary confinement I am facing known to these officials.
Dare to Struggle Dare to Win!
All Power to the People!
___________
Endnote:
See, RED ONION STATE PRISON: SUPERMAXIMUM SECURITY CONFINEMENT IN VIRGINIA, Human Rights Watch (1999), www.hrw.org
Make your voice heard. Be sure to use Rashid’s legal name—Kevin Johnson— and his prison # 1007485
Contact:
Sussex1State Prison Warden Kevin McCoy (804) 834-9967
Harold W Clarke. (804) 887-8080 harold.clarke@vadoc.virginia.gov
David N. Robinson (276) 524-3685 david.n.robinson@vadoc.virginia.gov
To write to Rashid:
Kevin Johnson #1007485
Sussex 1
24414 Musselwhite Dr.
Waverly, VA 23891