Pepper-Sprayed for Praying

Reporting for this story was supported by the Fund for Investigative Journalism.

Steven Stafford still cries when he talks about the night of Feb. 28, 2021. “They tried to kill me… they tried to kill me.” 

Stafford still struggles with traumatic memories and fear due to that night. “I know now that by the Mercy of God that they didn’t kill me that night,” Stafford says.  

That night, an ongoing lawsuit alleges, correctional officers at Missouri’s Eastern Reception Diagnostic Correctional Center pepper-sprayed and handcuffed Stafford and six other men before marching them barefoot across a muddy field and placing them in solitary confinement.

Stafford and the other men had not engaged in any violence. Their only offense, according to prison disciplinary records included in the lawsuit, was praying in a common room instead of the prison chapel, which had been closed since the COVID-19 pandemic began in 2020.

In their response to the court, the defendants denied that this took place.  

For decades, Muslims in prison have been at the forefront of efforts to guarantee the right to religious liberty behind bars. But experiences like Stafford’s remain all too common. Prison policies around prayer and other religious practices are often vague, leaving much up to the discretion of correctional officers. This poses unique challenges for Muslims, who frequently face deep-seated cultural biases and Islamophobia that undermine their ability to practice their religion freely.

“There’s a default equation of Islam and security risk that does not apply to other faiths and does not seem to apply to other faiths,” says Christina Jump, Civil Litigation Department Head at Muslim Legal Fund of America. “When it comes to Muslims having access to prayer materials, anything that is in Arabic, the concept of more than one inmate gathering at a time scares some facilities.”

The Missouri Department of Corrections declined to comment on this story, citing ongoing litigation.

“Stop Praying Now”

For nearly a year, Steven Stafford and other Muslims incarcerated in housing unit 4B of the Eastern Reception and Diagnostic Correctional Center (ERDCC) in Bonne Terre, Missouri, said they gathered in the living area in the wing several times a day for group prayers. They said they had gathered there hundreds of times in the months since the prison chapel had shut down at the start of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“So we proceeded to pray in the wing whenever the opportunity provided,” says Reginald Clemons, one of the other incarcerated Muslims who was there that night. “Especially since according to the Quran, congregational prayer holds 23 times the blessings over praying by oneself.”

Feb. 28, 2021, was different. Shortly after Stafford and eight other men began praying, Sergeant Michelle Basham entered the room. “Stop praying now,” Basham told the men, according to the lawsuit, which they filed in federal court the next year. “There’s no praying outside the chapel.”

Stafford said he sped up his prayer in an attempt to finish faster—stopping mid-prayer would violate his religious beliefs. According to the lawsuit, Basham called for backup when they didn’t respond to her order to stop. Sergeant Carl Hart and other guards answered her call.

“Suddenly, we were surrounded,” says Vincent Hood, one of the men praying that night. He said officers ordered the men to stop praying and attempted to cuff them.

Despite the chaos around them, the men did their best to finish their prayers. That’s when they said Hart and the other officers began spraying mace.

 “It got in my mouth and throat,” Stafford recalls. He said guards cuffed his hands behind his back and hit him with batons. One officer allegedly slammed him face-first onto the concrete floor and put Stafford in a chokehold while jumping on Stafford’s back. 

“I can’t breathe,” pleaded Stafford, who has severe asthma. According to the lawsuit, Hart responded, “If you’re talking, you’re breathing.”

Lawyers for Hart and Basham did not respond to requests for comment; the lawsuit is still pending in federal court. In legal filings, Hart and Basham admitted to using pepper spray and restraining the men, but they denied the use of excessive force and other allegations of wrongdoing. 

According to the lawsuit, guards cuffed and subdued each of the men gathered in the common room.  Guards then marched the men, many of whom only wore socks, outside into the freezing rain and across a muddy softball field to the prison’s solitary confinement unit.

Defendants in court filings denied that they made the men walk in the freezing rain with only their socks.  

Once there, guards locked the men in solitary confinement cells, where they say they sat for several hours in their mace-soaked clothing. 

“I’m sitting here soaked in mace, there’s nowhere for me to sit down, it’s freezing, so I can’t take off the t-shirt,” Reginald Clemons, one of the men praying that night, told The Appeal. “But the t-shirt is hot with chemicals, and I’m trying to settle down. My eyes are burning, my skin is burning, everything is burning, and all I could do is sit on this cold ground and ball up a little bit and pick a spot to stare at and try to zone out.”

According to the  lawsuit, prison officials left the men in their cells for more than 15 hours before allowing them to shower and receive medical attention.

Incarcerated Muslims at the Forefront of the Fight for Religious Freedom

Federal laws, along with the First Amendment, guarantee the right to religious freedom within prisons. Under federal law, prison officials can only restrict the free exercise of religion to advance a “compelling governmental interest,” and they must use

“the least restrictive means of furthering that compelling governmental interest.”

Since the 1950s, Muslim prisoners have been at the forefront of efforts to protect religious freedom within prisons. Muslim prisoners filed thousands of lawsuits, resulting in 66 reported federal court decisions between 1961 and 1978, including a 1964 Supreme Court opinion enshrining Muslim prisoners’ right to access the Quran.

Despite these victories, Muslims still face steep barriers to practicing their religion in prison. A review of prison policies by the Muslim Advocates, a civil rights organization, found that many states have only vague language in their policies, while 12 states lack specific protections for Muslims altogether.

In Missouri, ambiguous policies around the right to pray in groups mean that prisoners’ ability to congregate for prayer is left to the discretion of correctional officers. This poses unique risks for incarcerated Muslims, as deep-seated cultural biases often lead prison officials to view Islam with suspicion.

Carl Hart, the guard who first started pepper-spraying the men, had a documented history of anti-Muslim attitudes, according to the lawsuit. Several years prior, prison officials removed Hart from Ramadan meal delivery after he allegedly said “I have PTSD from having been trained to kill Muslims in Afghanistan” and complained that he had to “feed these motherfuckers.” Lawyers for Hart and MODOC denied these allegations in their response to the lawsuit.

Damage Control

Two days after the incident, officials at ERDCC started damage control. They called a meeting in the chapel attended by more than 70 Muslim prisoners in which deputy warden Matt Raymond said that guards had been wrong to pepper-spray the men and promised to hold them accountable, according to the lawsuit.

Raymond also promised that officials would allow Muslims to pray in groups in the future and said that he would drop disciplinary charges against anyone who was peacefully praying the night of the attack. On March 10, prison officials reduced the disciplinary charges against the men to “disobeying an order” and sentenced them to time served. 

Despite the reduced charges, Stafford, Clemons, and several other men lost their placement in the prison’s honor dorm as a result of the infractions. Clemons and others were transferred to other prisons across the state in the months after the attack, and Stafford told The Appeal that he lost his job working in the prison kitchen. In court filings,  MODOC acknowledged the transfers and admitted firing Stafford but denied that these actions were retaliation.

In response to a public records request, MODOC told The Appeal that it had no employee disciplinary records related to the attack. In the summer of 2022, Hart was arrested on state charges of possession of child sexual abuse material. Six months later, federal prosecutors indicted Hart for possession of child sexual abuse material, along with a civil rights violation for an October 2021 incident in which he pepper-sprayed and assaulted a prisoner after a verbal altercation. Hart pleaded guilty to one charge of deprivation of civil rights and two charges of possession of child sexual abuse material in May 2023 and received a seven-year prison sentence.

The lawsuit against prison officials filed by Stafford, Clemons, and seven other men is still ongoing. In June, their attorneys accused prison officials of withholding several hours of security camera footage depicting the attack. In 2023, officials released footage from three cameras under judicial seal, meaning that the men’s lawyers are prohibited from sharing it publicly. In an email to the men’s attorneys, Missouri Deputy Attorney General Melody McCombs wrote that footage from the fourth camera is likely no longer available.

In response to a public records request for videos of the incident filed by The Appeal, MODOC wrote, “Release of videos from this system could jeopardize institutional security and the safe and secure operations of our facilities.”

Four years after the incident, Stafford told The Appeal he still has physical and emotional scars from that night.

“You would be surprised at how hard it has been for me,” Stafford said. “To get my mind back on track without falling apart crying all the time. The smallest things trigger me.”