John Hult/South Dakota Searchlight
The state of South Dakota will pay $6,000 to an inmate who represented himself in a lawsuit over his assault by a correctional officer in 2022.
The settlement, filed this week in federal court, comes on the heels of a state-level trial at which a jury convicted the officer of simple assault.
Shawn Albrecht was the victim in that case against Joshua Westenkirchner.
At trial, jurors learned that Albrecht has a history of mental illness and of swallowing objects, and has been hospitalized as a result on multiple occasions. Westenkirchner was among the officers involved in strapping Albrecht to a table in March 2022 to prevent him from swallowing more objects.
Jurors found Westenkirchner guilty of simple assault for his actions over the course of two days, which included applying pressure to the inmate’s throat and allegedly banging his head into a metal table. Westenkirchner argued that he hadn’t choked Albrecht and disputed the claim that he’d slammed the restrained inmate’s head onto the table.
The jury found Westenkirchner not guilty of aggravated assault, which is a felony that can draw prison time for the perpetrator of a chokehold.
As the criminal trial worked its way through South Dakota’s Unified Judicial System toward its August trial in Sioux Falls, Albrecht’s civil lawsuit proceeded in the U.S. District Court of South Dakota.
Albrecht alleged that his mistreatment in March 2022 rose to the level of a civil rights violation. In addition to Westenkirchner and one other correctional officer, his self-filed lawsuit named the former and current warden of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, where he lives, and Department of Corrections Secretary Kelli Wasko as defendants.
At Westenkirchner’s criminal trial, he testified that he’d been “four-pointed” for weeks at a time, meaning he’d been restrained by his hands and feet. It was unclear from the testimony if such setups had been full-day affairs, but he said he’s “one of the few” inmates still tied down after a DOC policy change.
At trial, jurors learned that Albrecht has a history of mental illness and of swallowing objects, and has been hospitalized as a result on multiple occasions. Westenkirchner was among the officers involved in strapping Albrecht to a table in March 2022 to prevent him from swallowing more objects.
Jurors found Westenkirchner guilty of simple assault for his actions over the course of two days, which included applying pressure to the inmate’s throat and allegedly banging his head into a metal table. Westenkirchner argued that he hadn’t choked Albrecht and disputed the claim that he’d slammed the restrained inmate’s head onto the table.
The jury found Westenkirchner not guilty of aggravated assault, which is a felony that can draw prison time for the perpetrator of a chokehold.
As the criminal trial worked its way through South Dakota’s Unified Judicial System toward its August trial in Sioux Falls, Albrecht’s civil lawsuit proceeded in the U.S. District Court of South Dakota.
Albrecht alleged that his mistreatment in March 2022 rose to the level of a civil rights violation. In addition to Westenkirchner and one other correctional officer, his self-filed lawsuit named the former and current warden of the South Dakota State Penitentiary, where he lives, and Department of Corrections Secretary Kelli Wasko as defendants.
At Westenkirchner’s criminal trial, he testified that he’d been “four-pointed” for weeks at a time, meaning he’d been restrained by his hands and feet. It was unclear from the testimony if such setups had been full-day affairs, but he said he’s “one of the few” inmates still tied down after a DOC policy change.