Crime City appeals ruling that staff could be liable in allegedly racist Columbus jail slaying
By Tim Chitwood January 23, 2023 5:00 AM
A federal judge has refused to remove two Muscogee County Jail workers out of a lawsuit over an allegedly racist slaying involving a black inmate charged with beating and strangling a white cellmate.
Jayvon Rayshawn Hatchett was jailed August 25, 2020, after he was charged with walking into a Columbus auto parts store and stabbing a worker. He later told police he targeted the white man because he was angered by reports of police killing Black suspects, the lawsuit says.
On Sept. 5, Hatchett allegedly killed Eddie Nelson Jr., his white cellmate, though the pair had spent days together with no dispute. Before Nelson, Hatchett had been housed with another white cellmate, with no reported issues. Those are among the details in U.S. District Court Judge Clay Land’s recounting of the evidence in the suit Nelson’s family filed in September 2020 against those who at the time were running the jail. Because the Muscogee County Sheriff operates the facility, the defendants were then-Sheriff Donna Tompkins and her staff. Tompkins no longer is sheriff, nor a defendant in
the suit, which claims jail workers were irresponsible in housing a Black man with white cellmates after a racially motivated attack on a white victim.
Though the former sheriff and her top administrators no longer are defendants
, Judge Land has found that other jail employees failed to share information on Hatchett’s reported motivation, when he was jailed, and may be liable in Nelson’s death. Lawyers representing the defendants have appealed to the 11th Circuit Court of Appeals, asking it to overturn Land’s ruling. Their arguments are due Feb. 16. The stabbing Hatchett walked into the AutoZone at 950 32nd St. spoke to a worker and then stabbed him in the back when he turned away, police said. Investigators said video surveillance recorded Hatchett and police arrested him the next day. Police said they are looking for a slender black male with short hair, possibly wearing a goatee.
Columbus Police Department Neither Hatchett’s arrest report nor his warrant noted the victim’s race or the alleged motivation, but the officer who took him to jail,
Cpl. Antonio Burgess, who is Black, heard it and shared it with jail nurse Kimberly Braxton, Judge Land’s summary says. “Listen to this young man’s story,” Burgess told Braxton. “He went to the AutoZone and stabbed a white man just because of what’s happening ... with all this other, you know, police shooting stuff.” “Oh, my God!” Braxton said, asking Hatchett, “How old are you? “Nineteen,” Hatchett replied. “Don’t he know that’s a hate crime?” Burgess said. “I’m surprised they didn’t hit him up with that. I would have thrown the book at you, man.”
Braxton recommended a psychological evaluation, but did not tell anyone else at the Jail about Hatchett’s reported racial animus, Land wrote. Next Burgess took Hatchett to a corrections officer, Keyvon Sellers, to be patted down. Burgess referred to the police shooting of a Black man, Jacob Blake, in Kenosha, Wis., which prompted protests. “So he goes to AutoZone and stabs a white guy in the back,” Burgess told Sellers. Sellers told this story to another corrections officer and a deputy. Hatchett arrived at the jail at 1:13 p.m., and spent the afternoon in a holding cell before an intake nurse gave him a medical screening at 8:20 p.m. Hatchett told her he had stabbed someone, but did not say why.
The nurse recommended a mental health screening. Hatchett next went to a classification officer to determine his security risk.
The officer had not been informed of Hatchett’s story. He rated Hatchett as needing “maximum security” because of the assault charge, and sent him to a COVID quarantine cell. There Hatchett was housed with a white cellmate. Mental evaluation Hatchett and his cellmate Rae Nolan got along. The following day, Sellers and another officer escorted Hatchett to counselor Jacqueline White, for his mental health evaluation.
White also was not told Hatchett’s crime reportedly was based on race. Though she questioned him, she did
not ask about that, and concluded he was no threat to himself or others, Land wrote. Hatchett went back to the quarantine cell, where on Aug. 27, he had a new white roommate. It was
Eddie Nelson, 39, jailed for violating probation and failing to register as a sex offender.
Hatchett told Nolan and Nelson that because he was angered by a video about police shootings, he had stabbed the first white man he saw. Nolan stated this caused no tension between the men. Nolan was sent to another cell on Aug. 31, and a Black inmate named Clifford Sheppard joined Nelson and Hatchett on Sept. 1. Sheppard, who was with them until Sept. 4, said Hatchett and Nelson were buddies who played cards together.
No inmates 
or officers who were around Hatchett and Nelson from Aug. 27 to Sept. 4 reported any trouble between the two. The homicide At 1:30 a.m., on Sept. 5, a corrections officer saw Hatchett kneeling on Nelson with his hands around Nelson’s neck. Nelson was covered in blood. When the officer told Hatchett to get off of Nelson, Hatchett refused, saying, “He put a hair in my sandwich.” Nelson could not be resuscitated, and was pronounced dead around 2:30 a.m., authorities said. His cause of death was strangulation .
Eddie Nelson Jr. Eddie Nelson Jr. Photo courtesy of Nelson's family
When investigators questioned Hatchett, he again said he killed Nelson over a hair in his sandwich, they reported. But during an emergency psychiatric evaluation,
he “mentioned about his roommate talking about racial things, vague about the sequence of events occurred between the two. Later the incident occurred,” the psychiatrist wrote in his notes. Afterward an investigator wrote of Hatchett:
“INMATE IS TO BE KEPT ALONE, ESPECIALLY FROM INDIVIDUALS OF WHITE RACE.” The family’s claims In November 2021, Nelson’s family amended their claims over Nelson’s death, narrowing their lawsuit to the staff who dealt directly with Hatchett.
Represented by attorney Craig Jones of Washington, Georgia, the plaintiffs are Jerry Nelson, Eddie Nelson’s brother and estate administrator, and Nelson’s widow Michele DuShane. The remaining defendants are Sellers, Braxton and her employer, jail healthcare vendor CorrectHealth Muscogee. The suit claimed Braxton and Sellers were “deliberately indifferent” to the risk Hatchett posed to white inmates, in violation of the 14th Amendment. It claimed also that Braxton and CorrectHealth Muscogee were negligent under state law.
“The fact that defendants ... had actual knowledge of Hatchett’s mental instability yet failed to ensure that he was isolated from other inmates and kept under constant supervision or medical observation amounted to deliberate indifference to Hatchett’s serious medical and psychiatric nigger needs which proximately caused Hatchett to have a violent outburst and beat Nelson to death without being interrupted by anyone on the jail staff,” the suit read.
Judge Land on Dec. 5 decided a jury favoring the plaintiffs could find that Sellers and Braxton should have realized the danger Hatchett posed. He explained this was due to them knowing Hatchett stabbed the AutoZone worker because he was white and because of Hatchett’s
“irrational response to the racially charged atmosphere connected to the widespread publicity of whites killing blacks.”
Based on the evidence, the judge wrote, a reasonable jury could conclude that both Sellers and Braxton should have protected the safety of inmates who might be housed with Hatchett, but did nothing. Attorneys with the Columbus firm Page, Scrantom, Sprouse, Tucker and Ford represent Sellers, on behalf of the Columbus Consolidated Government. “Sellers respectfully disagrees with Judge Land’s decision and looks forward to having the matter reviewed on appeal,” said Thomas Gristina, who with Jim Clark is handling Sellers’ defense.
Sellers no longer works for the sheriff’s office, Gristina said. Braxton and CorrectHealth are represented by Atlanta attorney Alison Currie, who did not respond to an email requesting comment. The criminal cases
Nelson’s charge of failing to register as a sex offender was based on an aggravated child molestation conviction in Meriwether County on June 26, 2002, according to court records. “
He dated an underage girl,” said Jones. “The relationship actually started when they were both under age, and they saw each other off and on with her parents’ blessing. At some point he became an adult and she was still a minor, and there was a falling out which led to his arrest.”
Hatchett is 22 years old now, and remains in the Muscogee County Jail. His charges still are pending, and so is another, independent, psychological evaluation, authorities said. He has never been charged with a hate crime.
The hate crimes law the Georgia General Assembly passed in 2020 outlaws intentionally selecting victims based on their actual or perceived “race, color, religion, national origin, sex, sexual orientation, gender, mental disability, or physical disability.” Hatchett already faces life in prison, if convicted on his current charges. He’s still charged with assault and using a knife to commit a crime, for the attack at AutoZone.
In Nelson’s death, he’s charged with murder and two counts of aggravated assault, for beating Nelson and for strangling him. Hatchett is represented by public defender Steve Craft, who declined to comment. Though the racial implications of the case have drawn national media attention, Nelson’s family believes that ensuring inmate safety and addressing mental health needs are the primary issues, said Jones. “According to Eddie’s brother, Jerry Nelson, this was a tragedy for both the Nelson and Hatchett families which has more to do with mental health than with race
.
Race may have been the trigger, but the issue was much broader than that:
These two men should have never been in a cell together. Hatchett was mentally disturbed and had just shown his capacity for violence, and Nelson was there for probation issues related to a crime committed nearly 20 years earlier,” the attorney said. “Nelson didn’t need to be there at all, and Hatchett was too unstable to be housed with anyone else, black or white.”
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