TECUMSEH -- A Johnson County jury watched silently Monday, the only sound in the courtroom from the air conditioner, as video from the Tecumseh State Correctional Institution played on the big flat-screen TV.
It was the first public glimpse onto the yard and the inmate-on-prison worker assaults that sparked a destructive and deadly Mother’s Day riot in 2015.
“The incident you’re going to hear about took place like that,” Assistant Nebraska Attorney General Corey O’Brien said in opening statements, snapping his finger.
Inmate Roger Weikle is on trial accused of running at Cpl. Joseph Hatzenbuehler and trying to stomp on his head as he tussled with another inmate on the ground. But he wasn't at the defense table Monday. He refused to come to court.
His attorney, Todd Lancaster of the Nebraska Commission on Public Advocacy, told the jury to watch for inconsistent stories and details that have changed over time.
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What the evidence shows is what the verdict should be, he said.
Even as work continues on the roof of a housing unit at the prison north of town, the jury of seven women and five men listened in the afternoon as Hatzenbuehler, an officer with the Schuyler Police Department now, testified about what happened May 10, 2015.
He had worked at the Tecumseh prison for 7½ years and had just started his shift posted to the yard when a call came over his radio to go deal with an inmate in front of Housing Unit 2. About a minute and a half later he was trying to put Rashad Washington in restraints when another inmate, allegedly Frederick Gooch, ran up and punched Hatzenbuehler in the face.
A caseworker came at the two men and they ended up on the ground.
Hatzenbuehler said as soon as he was able to sit up he saw Weikle coming at him, trying to stomp on his face. He said he put up his right arm to shield his face before Weikle made contact.
A co-worker watching described it later as a "curb-stomp,” but said she didn’t see if he made contact.
On cross examination Hatzenbuehler agreed he wrote in a report right after it happened that he was able to ward off Weikle's blow using both of his hands and said he had been kicked by a boot. But he said he wrote that the day it happened, before going to the hospital thinking his arm might be broken.
And he had just assumed it had been a boot.
Video showed Weikle was wearing white tennis shoes, not black state-issued boots.
But Hatzenbuehler said it wasn’t possible that the blow to his arm had come from the caseworker who had taken him and Gooch to the ground, or from Gooch or another inmate allegedly involved in the scuffle, John Zalme.
Jacob Bents doesn’t work at the prison now, but that afternoon he was working the joystick in a room monitoring video with six large screens capable of displaying all the cameras in the prison. He tried to focus the cameras at what was happening on the yard.
He knew Hatzenbuehler had been assaulted but he didn’t know where, then saw two other inmates, one of them Weikle, come into the picture, he said.
He could see Weikle try to jump on Hatzenbuehler, who was on the ground, but he couldn’t tell if he hit him.
“It happened so fast,” Bents said.
At the end of the three videos, two shown at half speed, the inmates drop to the ground. A shot had been fired, he said.
A still shot, blown up from the video, shows Weikle’s leg in mid-air above the pile.
Bents said shortly after Weikle was detained he saw him at in-take and Weikle said “When there’s a fight I just have to jump in.” In his report, he took note, too, how Weikle said he had blacked out and didn’t remember anything, just reacted.
After the state rested, the defense called inmate Dan Jones, who testified about how Weikle had served 21 years in intensive management segregation and was “out there.”
“There’s no such thing as mental health down there,” Jones said.
He said in the segregated management unit inmates can talk to someone about issues, but it’s done in front of the 16 other inmates on the gallery so no one does.
O’Brien pointed out inmates only get to the segregated unit because they broke the rules.
“I don’t think if you go down there you should be there for 18 years,” Jones said.
“We’re not here for that,” O’Brien said, describing the trial.
The jury is expected to get the case for deliberation on Tuesday.