Officials with a non-profit public interest law firm are stating that a stipulation of dismissal will be filed soon subject to the settlement of a lawsuit involving the death of an inmate at Hays State Prison. According to a news release from the Southern Center for Human Rights the suit will be settled for an undisclosed sum.

The lawsuit, Turner vs. Owens, filed in September of 2013 – alleged that in December 2012, Damion MacClain was beaten and strangled to death by other inmates who – because of the lack of adequate supervision, broken cell-door locks long ignored by Defendants and other dangerous conditions – were able to leave their cells in the middle of the night, assault the victim and kill him.

MacClain was the second of three men killed at Hays in a five-week period, from December 2012 to February of 2013. Derrick Stubbs was found dead in his cell December 19th, 2012; Damion MacClain was murdered on December 26th of 2012 – and Nathaniel Reynolds was murdered on January 18th, 2013.

A fourth prisoner, 19-year-old Pippa Hall-Jackson, was stabbed to death by a fellow inmate on February 5th, 2013 at Georgia Diagnostic & Classification Prison, shortly after both men stepped off a bus from Hays.

The mothers of both Hall-Jackson and Reynolds have filed lawsuits in federal court.

(WRGA/www.wrgarome.com)