The Umatilla County Courthouse in Pendleton, Ore.
Antonio Sierra / OPB
An Oregon prison guard sanctioned the attack of a man serving time at the Eastern Oregon Correctional Institution in 2022. After the attack, the Oregon Department of Corrections failed to meet the standards of medical care to treat “extreme and debilitating injuries.”
Those findings were issued in a five-page written order Tuesday by Umatilla County Circuit Court Judge Robert Collins Jr.
The Oregon Department of Corrections must now provide a bevy of specialized medical care, including a chronic pain assessment and surgical consultation, to Richard Michael Fay following a violent assault more than two years ago in the prison that left him unable to move and ultimately hospitalized.
On April 18, 2022, Correctional Officer Jorge Morfin gave what other inmates interpreted as an invitation for them to go after “known sex offenders within the unit,” the judge wrote. In 2017, Fay pleaded guilty in Jackson County to several felonies, including using a child in a display of sexually explicit conduct.
After Morfin’s announcement, sex offenders were targeted in their cells and came out of the unit “with bumps and bruises, cuts,” the judge found. Fay suffered an “extremely damaging, brutal, and violent assault” on June 2, 2022, that left him with injuries that included a traumatic brain injury, fractured ribs and chronic pain.
According to court documents filed by Fay’s attorney, he was “punched, kicked and strangled to unconsciousness. He sustained a serious concussion, multiple broken ribs, chipped teeth, throat trauma and back injuries. He could not even stand after the assault and had to be hospitalized.”
In a statement, Amber Campbell, a spokesperson with the Oregon Department of Corrections, confirmed Morfin still works at the Pendleton-based prison. Campbell said the agency is “committed to the safety and rehabilitation of those in our custody,” and that they “take incidents like this extremely seriously.”
The Department of Safety, Standards and Training, which licenses law enforcement and correctional officers, lists Morfin’s work status as active.
“It appears that Officer Morfin has continued his duties in the prison without consequence, despite the testimony of several witnesses that he has a habit of determining the conviction status of sex offenders on the unit and sharing that information with other [adults in custody],” Collins wrote in his findings Tuesday.
Collins wrote that Fay’s “injuries were in fact, the result of intentional conduct by a prison guard.”
Last year, Fay filed a court petition to get medical care. During trial earlier this year, a doctor who was hired as an outside expert on the case concluded the attack caused serious and persistent neurological issues along with a spinal cord injury.
As Collins stated, the doctor concluded Fay “has not been treated within the standard of care due in the medical community.” He has fractured ribs that will need surgery to repair, the doctor found, and noted that he did not receive proper care for a traumatic brain injury.
“The court finds that ODOC has unconstitutionally inflected cruel and unusual punishment and unnecessary rigor by failing to provide adequate medical treatment” for Fay, Collins wrote.
Tara Herivel, who represented Fay, said what happened to him is not uncommon.
“If guards are allowed to orchestrate, essentially, attacks on prisoners, that is criminal conduct,” Herivel said. “And the Oregon Department of Corrections is complicit in that by not disciplining staff, as with Morfin, then they are complicit in criminal conduct. The sentence is incarceration. The sentence is not to go be assaulted, disabled or killed by other prisons as allowed by DOC.”
