VIRGINIA BREAKS A LEG TO TRANSFER ME OUT OF STATE (2025) By Kevin “Rashid” Johnson

[Originally posted to RashidMOD.com on May 15, 2025.]

On the early morning on May 1, 2025 I was awakened by guards opening my general population cell door at Virginia’s Keen Mountain Correctional (sic!) Center and telling me to report to the prison’s personal property department.

Upon reporting to property I was dressed out for a transportation run, loaded onto a steel-lined transport van, driven to an airfield and loaded onto a prison airplane. I was promptly flown to South Carolina, where we were met by a convoy of transport officials including local cops and prison officials.

From this point things went sideways.

On the airfield I was switched to SC restraints, where I was almost hogtied. I was cuffed by the wrists bent at the waist and squatting with my wrists connected by a chain to shackles on my ankles.

In this cramped position I was hoisted into another steel-lined van that had the factory-installed seatbelts removed. I had no way of maintaining leverage as the convoy raced through traffic with lights flashing and sirens blaring like we were in a high-speed chase. Inside, I was bounced violently off the van’s steel surfaces.

At one point my body slammed into the van’s front wall against my left leg. Something along the length of the lower extremity popped. It felt like a bone broke.

I was taken to SC’s Kirkland prison, put through an intake process, and upon persistent complaints my leg was x-rayed.

No report was given on the x-ray results.

I asked repeatedly to call an attorney.

I was then made to hobble, under supervision of two deputy wardens and a major, through the prison and taken to solitary confinement, where I was thrown naked into an empty cold cell with nothing but a filthy mattress. I refused to accept any meals.

I was confronted early the next morning, May 2nd, and told I was leaving Kirkland.

This time I was chained up where I could stand, put into a car with normal seat belts and seats, and was driven by two guards to SC’s Perry Correctional (sic!) Institution. Where, I was taken through an intake process, and again thrown into solitary. The conditions of this solitary were downright medieval.

There was no bed, just a raised concrete platform about six inches off the floor. I was given no mattress. I was allowed two sheets, a thin piece of knitted cloth they called a blanket, boxers and a jumpsuit. The cell was ice cold. I continued to refuse meals and to request an attorney call. When I was much later offered a mattress I declined.

At nights the cells were left pitch black and spiders, bugs and mice crawled around and on me. (1) I barely slept.

Others were in the unit who’d been kept and tortured in its cold dank cells for years, like Warren Chastain (2 years) and Jimmy Causey (8 years).

Jimmy has faced repeated retaliations for attempting to challenge and expose those conditions, including having his tablet use suspended for 2 years for doing an interview with ABC in 2018. NBC wants to interview Warren but he fears to speak under threat of similar retaliation. (2)

In Perry’s solitary, prisoners almost never receive out of cell exercise. Warren, Jimmy and others report, as of May they had received outside exercise only 5 times (for one hour periods) during 2025. They are allowed no books nor other personal property. They sit idle day after day.

I was never allowed to speak with attorneys who persisted with trying to arrange legal calls with me. They and I were and continue to be given the runaround.

On May 5 and 7 I spoke with Perry’s warden, Curtis Earley, and regional head Willie Davis. No one could nor even tried to explain my treatment in SC. They claimed to be “feeling me out” in their solitary unit, but I was going to be placed in GP if I came off my hunger strike. It was clear, however, that I was facing retaliation in response to my challenging and exposing abuses in Va’s prisons in the media and courts, and was being given a taste of what lay in store should I continue such efforts in and against SC.

On May 13, after ending a 2-week hunger strike, I was released to Perry’s GP, where I can only call one person per day, have been blocked from being able to make legal calls to willing attorneys, and have none of my personal property.

This despite that I have numerous pending court cases and deadlines.

The prevailing fiction is that I asked to be sent here to SC. I did not.

On Dec 4, 2024 I was summoned from Red Onion with no prior notice to federal court in Va in a lawsuit against conditions at the prison. Lawyers with Rights Behind Bars had brought the suit earlier that year.

At court they told me a settlement conference was underway and the judge, Henry Hudson, was pressing them to settle. I was told the judge was hostile to prisoners and pro-officials. That I’d not likely get a a fair shake with him if we went to trial. I told the lawyers over and again I would only settle on removal from Va’s Western region, not merely out of Red Onion, and I wanted to remain in Va where my family is.

They kept returning with offers to be sent to Keen Mountain in the Western region and to be sent out of state. If I didn’t agree, they prompted, I’d be sent back to Red Onion, where all manner of abuse continued and I was being held incommunicado and indefinitely in solitary. Under duress I signed the agreement. But immediately (that same day and repeatedly afterward) told the lawyers to withdraw it; that I wanted to fight the case. They didn’t and wouldn’t.

I told them over and again I did not want the settlement, but kept getting put off in my demands to withdraw it. I did not of my free will agree to any out-of-state transfer.

As always, my choice was to…

Dare to struggle Dare to Win!

Endnotes:
1. The courts has long held (since the 1970s) that prisoners’ right to communicate with the media to report prison conditions is as fundamental as the right to seek redress in the courts. See, for example, Taylor v. Sterrett, 532 F.2d 462 (5th Cir. 1976); Guajardo v. Estelle, 580 F.2d 748 (5th Cir. 1978)

2. Prison officials may not retaliate against prisoners exercising First Amendment rights, like freedom of speech or press, especially such as create chilling effects against the future exercise of those rights. Rhodes v. Robinson, 408 F.3d 559, 567-68 (9th Cir. 2005).