North Carolina Lawyers Weekly
ASHEVILLE (AP) — A former inmate at the Craggy Correctional Center has won a federal sexual abuse lawsuit against a former prison supervisor.
The Asheville Citizen-Times reported that a federal jury in Winston-Salem ruled that the male inmate’s constitutional rights were violated by 57-year-old Edith Pope, the assistant superintendent at the prison in Buncombe County.
The jury awarded the inmate just $1 in compensation.
Pope had pleaded guilty to sexual battery by a custodian in 2006 was sentenced to about two years in prison.
The inmate’s lawyer, D.J. O’Brien, says the verdict shows Pope forced his client to have a nonconsensual sexual relationship with her.
The inmate had been convicted in 1990 in Polk County of second-degree murder, arson and burglary and was sentenced to life in prison.
