“It was a long, gruesome day, let me tell you,” Veela Morris recalls. “We’re women, so it was really bad for us. Nothing like that had ever happened to me.”
Anyone who has done time in Illinois prisons is aware of the “Orange Crush” — a militarized “tactical team” that in practice is a band of prison guards who dress in orange jumpsuits, wear riot gear, helmets, armored vests and military boots, and carry batons, shields and canisters of pepper spray on their belts.
While other state prison systems may have tactical teams, the Orange Crush is unique in Illinois. It has a reputation for brutality and is unlike any other. “I had heard of them,” said Morris, who spent 20 months in prison in 2010-2011. “But I had never had any dealings with them.”
“It was shocking because we were sleeping,” she recalled. “They were banging on the metal bars of the bunks with their batons, yelling at us, calling us all kinds of horrible names. I couldn’t believe it; it was like I was in a dream.”
Morris now lives on Chicago’s South Side where her family operates a family business — Harold’s Chicken Shack, a popular local chain — and has three children. She was one of the plaintiffs in an action. Henry v. HulettThis lawsuit was filed on behalf of around 200 women who were subjected in 2011 to a mass shakedown by Orange Crush. It is one among two Illinois lawsuits against Orange Crush. Ross v. GossettI reported on this for Truthout2017. Morris was a plaintiff in the suit. A jury recently ruled in favor. After an 11-year legal battle, Morris says it was “worth the wait, it was a long ride.”
The shakedown took places at Lincoln Correctional Center, which is located in central Illinois about three hours from Chicago. It housed nearly 1,000 women in 2011. Lincoln has been made into a prison for men and the women of Illinois are now being held in Decatur or Logan prisons. The John Howard Association, a prison watchdog organization, released a 2012 reportLincoln prison found that the women were more likely than others to be incarcerated in low-level drug and property charges. Approximately 80 percent of them also had children.
According to prison authorities there was no immediate danger when Orange Crush entered Lincoln prison in the early hours of March 31, 2011. The tactical teams consisted of Lincoln guards, along with cadets from Illinois Department of Corrections (IDOC). As warden Melody Hulett testified, she could not “think of any reason other than the training of cadets that [she] ordered a shakedown.” As the warden’s account makes clear, the shakedown was apparently a deliberate exercise designed to teach new guards how to strike fear into the hearts of those incarcerated at Lincoln and other prisons in Illinois. The reign of terror lasted at the least five hours up to lunch hour.
“I was rounded up with the other women in my housing unit, handcuffed, taken to the gymnasium and strip searched,” Ieshia Brown recalled in a sworn affidavit. As they entered, Orange Crush guards screamed at the women, called them “bitches,” told them to “shut up” and, according to Brown, “threatened to put us in segregation if we did not remain quiet.” They put the women in handcuffs that were, Brown said, “especially tight and painful.”
Brown was forced to stand for an entire hour in the common area as guards searched for the women. “I observed elderly prisoners crying around me because they were in pain,” Brown remembered. They were then taken to the gymnasium where they were again made to stand, “still in tight and painful handcuffs.”
The guards took them as groups of 5 to 7 women, to be strip scanned in a small cramped bathroom. For 15 minutes, the women stood naked shoulder to shoulder. “We were so close together that my elbow and hip were touching the elbow and hip of the woman next to me,” Brown said.
The women were in full view of the male officers and cadets as they entered the entrance. “I remember seeing male members of the Orange Crush tactical team in the gym looking at me as I was being searched,” Brown said. The women were “required to lift our breasts, bend over and spread our buttocks, and squat and cough.”
Brown described how guards made degrading comments as they conducted strip searches. “I remember the corrections officers laughing and making crude comments about some of the women’s body odors,” including one of the guards, “who put a cloth over her mouth and made comments like ‘you bitches stink.’”
When Brown arrived back in her cell, “it was destroyed, with property and belongings strewn about the room without regard to whom they belonged to,” she said.
Patricia Phillips, another plaintiff, also shared a similar story. She spoke of women on their period who “were forced to remove their tampons and sanitary napkins in front of everyone and throw them in a garbage can.” Women were not given replacement tampons or sanitary napkins, so many bled through their clothes.
Many of the women complained. “The drop box in my housing unit quickly overflowed with grievances,” Brown recalled. Phillips and Brown both submitted grievances but never received back.
In its 2012 report, the John Howard Association found IDOC’s grievance system at Lincoln and other prisons to be “flawed and unreliable.” There was a 60-day time limit on filing a grievance, and without a response, individuals were effectively blocked from any remedy under the Prison Litigation Reform Act of 1995 (PLRA), which requires an exhaustion of administrative remedies in order to pursue a claim in federal court. The John Howard Association, which is typically cautious in its approach, said this process was “hugely problematic.” The report pointed to the need for a more “effective grievance system.”
One grievance survived the Lincoln mass purge. The IDOC grievance form lists the name of the woman as blacked out. However, she wrote about that morning in her own handwriting. Upon being searched, she wrote, “I blacked out,” and woke up naked on the floor feeling “totally violated.”
Attorneys at filed a federal lawsuit shortly after the incident. Loevy and LoevySpringfield, Illinois-based law firm in the Seventh Circuit. Lawyers claimed their clients’ rights were violated based on the Fourth Amendment protecting against illegal search and seizure, and the Eighth Amendment protecting against cruel and unusual punishment. The case was eventually settled by the courts. dismissedAppeal court judges in 2019.
In a rare decision, the suit gained new life when it won in front of an “en banc” panel of all 12 judges of the Seventh Circuit, assembled whenever the court believes the issues in a case are of particular significance. The judges released their ruling on August 11, 2020, stating that, “the Fourth Amendment protects a right to bodily privacy for convicted prisoners, albeit in a significantly limited way, including during visual inspections.” The suit was further slowed down by the COVID-19 pandemic. A trial took place in June 2022, and — after 11 years of waiting — a jury decided in favor of the women.
Attorneys are awaiting a hearing in order to determine damages and injunctive remedies.
“The plaintiff women have fought for over a decade for recognition that what was done to them was wrong. The jury sent a powerful message that women in prison deserve to have their bodies treated with respect and dignity,” Ruth Brown, an attorney at Loevy and Loevy who argued the case, told Truthout. “No prisoner should have to undergo degrading, unprofessional and humiliating strip searches like this ever again — particularly during an unnecessary staff training exercise.”
Veela Morris reacted to the victory by saying Truthout: “Prison is its own little world with so many secrets, I wanted this story to come out. We are real women with feelings. The injustice they did us is wrong. I want them to never do this again.”
