His Jail Cell Wouldn’t Lock. Then He Was Assaulted.

After Cordero Riley refused to give up his jail-ordered flip-flops, a group of detainees entered his cell at Georgia’s Clayton County Jail and attacked him, according to a lawsuit he filed earlier this year over the April 2022 incident. The suit alleges that his cell, like many others at the jail, did not lock properly, underscoring a broader security issue that has plagued the facility for years. 

A guard did not discover Riley—beaten, bleeding, and struggling to breathe—until more than seven hours later. He was taken to the infirmary, where medical staff gave him only Motrin and ice. For days, guards and medical staff ignored his pleas to be sent to the emergency room.

Riley prayed he would survive.

“Lord, let me make it out,” he recalled thinking in an interview with The Appeal. “If I had to stay in that jail 48 more hours, I probably wouldn’t even be here.”

Almost a week after the attack, Riley was released from Clayton County Jail. The next day, his parents took him to the hospital, where he was diagnosed with a collapsed lung, a left rib fracture, and a head injury. Doctors identified fluid in his lungs. Riley was transferred to another hospital that could provide a higher level of care, according to his complaint. 

The suit names several parties, including the jail’s medical provider, CorrectHealth, Clayton County, and its sheriff, Levon Allen. In court filings, CorrectHealth and the county have denied wrongdoing and requested that the case be dismissed. Allen has also asked the court to dismiss Riley’s case, arguing that he cannot be sued in his individual capacity because he was acting as an “arm of the state.”  

Riley’s complaint says he fell victim to longstanding issues at the jail, which still plague the facility more than two years after his attack.

“Security conditions at the Jail have not materially changed: the locks have been either inoperable or could easily be compromised, and the Jail has been vastly overcrowded and grossly understaffed,” the suit says.

Last year, four men detained at the jail told The Appeal that the cell doors did not lock. “If anybody wants to do anything to you while you asleep, they can,” one said. 

In January, Allen told Atlanta News First that all of the locks at the jail had to be replaced and that the project would take about a year and a half to complete. Persistent overcrowding has also remained an issue. After a detainee was killed by his cellmate in January, the sheriff’s office said that more than 300 men were sleeping on the floor of the jail. 

Allen did not respond to The Appeal’s questions about the status of the lock repairs. When asked for comment on Riley’s suit, Allen directed The Appeal to contact the previous sheriff, Roland Boehrer, who was serving on an interim basis at the time of the attack. The County commissioners did not respond to requests for comment.

Riley’s ordeal began after he was booked into the jail for a nonviolent probation violation, he told The Appeal. He said he was shocked when he was assigned to the “max security” unit and crammed alongside two other men into a two-person cell, forcing one of them to sleep on the floor. On Riley’s first night at the jail, approximately an hour after he was placed in the cell, a detainee entered Riley’s unlocked cell and demanded Riley give him his jail-issued flip flops. Riley refused. The man left his cell and returned almost immediately with several others. 

“I see seven, maybe eight guys running up to the door,” he said. “I’m trying to get out the door, to get on the little catwalk so at least the guard sees me. The guys push me back in the room and close the door, setting that beat on me about 25 to 30 minutes.”

Although guards should have seen the assailants entering and exiting Riley’s cell, nobody intervened, according to the suit. 

During the nighttime count hours later, a corrections officer flashed his flashlight into the window of Riley’s cell, according to the complaint. Riley saw the light but couldn’t call for help. The following morning, an officer found Riley and brought him to the infirmary. 

The complaint says a nurse noted that Riley had been beaten in his face and ribs and had “pain with breathing.” The nurse recorded that Riley needed X-rays, but they were never ordered. Riley told officers and medical staff he needed to go to the emergency room. He was provided only Motrin and ice and sent back to general population. 

For the next several days, Riley said jail and medical staff ignored his repeated pleas to take him to the emergency room. He told them over and over again that he was in pain and couldn’t breathe, according to the suit. 

He was taken back to the infirmary just once, but again, he was given only Motrin and ice and sent back to his cell. During this visit, he told the nurses that he felt like he had a collapsed lung. He reported having sharp pains while breathing and said he needed to go to the emergency room. But in medical records for this visit, a nurse wrote that Riley had no signs of distress and that he “feels a lot better than a couple days ago.”  

After Riley told his family he’d been attacked, his father said he called the jail and spoke to a staff member who assured him Riley would receive medical care.  

“He never got any medical attention from them,” his father told The Appeal. “Nothing but Tylenol.”

The dangerous conditions at Clayton County Jail have drawn local and national attention in recent years, spurred in part by The Appeal’s reporting. In September, U.S. Senator Jon Ossoff of Georgia urged the U.S. Department of Justice to initiate a civil rights investigation into the jail following “disturbing reports concerning continued abuses.” Since then, eight people have died at the Clayton County Jail. Six detainees have died this year alone, more than in all of 2023, according to The Appeal’s review of records from the county sheriff’s office, which oversees the jail.

In a letter to the DOJ last month, U.S. Senators Ossoff and Raphael Warnock highlighted the high number of deaths at the jail, which The Appeal first reported. The Department of Justice did not respond to a request for comment. 

In the last few years, several officers at Clayton County Jail have been arrested and accused of bringing contraband into the facility or of orchestrating attacks on detainees. Last year, the Clayton County district attorney filed a 64-count racketeering indictment against dozens of detainees who were accused of extortion, among other offenses. 

CorrectHealth, the medical provider named in Riley’s suit, is receiving more than $1.2 million a month to provide healthcare to the jail’s detainees, an increase of over 25 percent from its previous contract with Clayton County. The company has repeatedly been accused—including in numerous lawsuits—of providing poor medical care at Clayton County Jail and other lockups across the country. Last year, The Appeal reported on a 32-year-old man who succumbed to testicular cancer while in the jail’s care. The Clayton County Medical Examiner’s Office determined medical neglect had contributed to his death. 

The company did not respond to requests for comment. In a court filing in response to Riley’s complaint, CorrectHealth stated that it had “met or exceeded the standard of care applicable to members of the medical profession generally under the same or similar circumstances.”

To Riley, the mistreatment he faced at Clayton County Jail reflects a callous indifference toward the welfare of detainees.

“Obviously, they got a spot for the officers to be safe,” Riley told The Appeal. “But as far as anyone off the street, the jail is not a safe place.”