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JUDGE SAYS ROANOKE DEPUTIES WILL BE PART OF LAWSUIT

The Roanoke officers were named after the suit was filed by a man who said he was beaten in jail.

Date: March 15, 2011
By: Mike Gangloff / The Roanoke Times

Two Roanoke sheriff's deputies can't escape a lawsuit filed by a jail inmate who said he was beaten, federal Judge James Turk ruled Monday.

Deputies Kenneth Ferrell and Jewell Payne are being sued in U.S. District Court in Roanoke, along with Sheriff Octavia Johnson and Deputy Brandon Young by a man who says he was attacked in the Roanoke City Jail after a February 2008 arrest for drunken driving.

Thomas Scott Vandegrift, 25, of Salem, a bartender and Virginia Tech student when he was arrested, says he was pummeled by deputies in the jail intake area, then again after being taken to a cell. Vandegrift said he suffered bruises, scrapes and strains.

In his court filing, Vandegrift said the assault began after he could not stop burping.

Vandegrift filed a formal complaint with the sheriff's office in 2008 and was told an internal investigation concluded the deputies acted correctly. He was not allowed to see the investigation report. In February 2010, Vandegrift filed a civil lawsuit seeking millions of dollars in damages from Johnson, Young and unnamed officers.

In July, he amended the lawsuit to name Ferrell and Payne as defendants.

Defense attorney Kevin Barnard of Roanoke has argued that Ferrell and Payne should be dropped from the lawsuit because they were named too long after the case began.
Vandegrift's attorney, John Fishwick of Roanoke, has said the deputies were not named earlier because the sheriff's office initially would not identify them.

A federal rule usually bars new defendants from being added to a case more than four months after the initial filing. That time limit can be waived if the defendants should have known that only a mistake kept them from being named.
In hearings last month, Turk said the sheriff's refusal to name the officers when Vandegrift first asked seemed like an attempted cover-up. Watching a video of officers hitting Vandegrift in the jail intake area, Turk said he was disturbed that the sheriff's office had concluded proper procedures were followed.

The judge summoned Johnson to court. She testified that she acted on legal advice in denying a Virginia Freedom of Information Act request from Vandegrift about the identity of the officers. The sheriff also testified she did not tell Ferrell or Payne about Vandegrift's lawsuit.

In an opinion filed Monday, Turk said Ferrell and Payne should have known they were the unnamed officers in Vandegrift's lawsuit. He noted that both deputies were friends with Young and talked to him often, and that Ferrell had read a newspaper article about the lawsuit.

The case is scheduled for a three-day jury trial starting May 4.

Contact Mike Gangloff at mike.gangloff@roanoke.com.

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