COLUMBIA -- A federal death row inmate convicted of kidnapping and murdering a Galivants Ferry woman testified Thursday he thought a beating was never going to end in a South Carolina jail after he was arrested.
Chadrick Fulks testified for several hours via video teleconference from federal death row in Terre Haute, Ind., in his federal lawsuit against Lexington County Sheriff James Metts and four deputies - Cain Mayrant, Bernice Mitchell, Paula Lybrand and Valerie Allen.
Fulks - who, along with co-defendant Brandon Basham, faces execution for kidnapping and killing Alice Donovan during a two-week, 2,300-mile crime spree after escaping from a Kentucky jail in 2002 - said he was brutally beaten in 2003 while awaiting transfer to the Richland County jail. He said he was attacked after he tried to keep photos he considered part of his legal materials from being destroyed.
"The next thing I know, out of nowhere, officer Mayrant grabbed me by the throat and struck me in the face," said Fulks, adding that he blacked out several times as Mayrant continued to punch and kick him while Allen helped hold him down.
Mitchell grabbed his head and tried to poke her fingers in his eyes, Fulks said. "Everything was just a big blur. It just felt like it was never going to stop," he said, his voice wavering as he began to cry.
As he was lifted up to be placed in a restraint chair, Fulks said Mayrant kicked him in the rear. Fulks' attorney, Chris Mills, had said Wednesday that Fulks' tailbone was cracked.
"It was just one of the worst things I've ever felt in my life," Fulks said. "Something cracked or something busted, I just knew something wasn't right."
In rebuttal, the four deputies each testified that they had never punched, kicked or hit Fulks, or seen anyone else act violently toward him on the day of his transfer.
"He seemed agitated," Mayrant said, adding that he tried to reason with Fulks to give up the photographs. "He growled at me and tried to bite my hand."
Lybrand and Allen both testified that Fulks warned them they'd "have to fight" to get the pictures, which Lybrand said appeared to be family photos, from him.
Earlier Thursday, U.S. District Judge Patrick Michael Duffy removed Metts, the sheriff, from the case, ruling that Fulks' attorneys had failed to prove he was being kept in inhumane conditions in the jail.
Fulks had testified he had been kept in a cold, dank cell with standing water on the floor and human excrement smeared on the walls and clogging the toilet. Fulks' attorneys said he developed a bacterial infection as a result of the conditions, but Duffy said that wasn't supported by evidence.
Jurors were expected to begin deliberating the case Friday. William Davidson, an attorney for the deputies, said he planned to call one more witness, a nurse who examined Fulks, to the stand.
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