Charles Graner - Prison Guard

Prison Guard

After his marriage, he moved to Butler, Pennsylvania, a coal mining area of 12,500 people in southwestern Pennsylvania, where his wife's family resided. From 1990 to 1994, he worked as a school custodian. In 1994, he began working as a corrections officer at Fayette County Prison in a shift with a "no-nonsense reputation." Once, Graner was accused of putting mace in a new guard's coffee as a joke, causing him to be sick.

In May 1996, he moved to the State Correctional Institution - Greene, a maximum-security prison in Greene County, Pennsylvania. Almost 70 percent of the inmates were black, many from large cities, but it was located in a rural part of the state and more than 90 percent of the guards were white. Guards at the prison were accused of beating and sexually assaulting prisoners and conducting cavity searches in view of other prisoners. There were also reports of racism, including reports of guards writing "KKK" in the blood of a beaten prisoner. In 1998, two guards were fired and 20 others were suspended, demoted or reprimanded for prisoner abuse.

In 1998, a prisoner accused Graner and three other guards of planting a razor blade in his food, causing his mouth to bleed when he ate it. The prisoner accused the guards of first ignoring his cries for help and then punching and kicking him when they took him to the nurse. Graner was accused of telling him to "Shut up, nigger, before we kill you." The allegations were denied; although a federal magistrate judge ruled that the charges had "arguable merit in fact and law," the case was dismissed when the prisoner disappeared after his release.

Graner and four other guards were also accused of beating another prisoner who had deliberately flooded his cell, taunting anti-capital punishment protesters, using racial epithets and telling a Muslim inmate he had rubbed pork all over his tray of food.

A second lawsuit involving Graner was brought by a prisoner who claimed that guards made him stand on one foot while they handcuffed and tripped him. This allegation, however, was ruled to have been made too late under the statute of limitations.