The Utah man who kidnapped teenager Elizabeth Smart in 2002 is being transferred out of the U.S. penitentiary in Terre Haute after being attacked in custody.
Brian David Mitchell survived at least two recent attacks at the prison, both in “protected” units meant to isolate individuals considered to be at higher risk of violence, according to people familiar with both incidents.
Timeline: Elizabeth Smart's abduction and aftermath
The assaults, which have not been previously reported, underscore the risks facing high-profile inmates in the U.S. prison system. Prisoners convicted of sex crimes, especially those involving minors, often become targets.
“There's no excuse for serious assaults in prison,” David Fathi, director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project, said in an interview. “The whole point of prison is surveillance and control, and the number-one job of prison administrators is to keep people safe. So, any serious assault is, by definition, a failure of prison management.”
That is particularly true in Terre Haute, Fathi said, as it’s one of few federal prisons designated for those the prison bureau has determined to need a higher level of surveillance themselves or higher protection from others.
But the bureau’s chronic shortage of qualified staff makes it difficult to perform those functions effectively, Fathi said.
“That takes time, that takes resources, and that takes staff,” Fathi said. “If you don't have enough custody staff, the prison is going to be a dangerous place—not only for incarcerated people but for staff, for visitors, for everybody.”
Listen: Smart describes ordeal of rape, abuse
In 2011, a federal jury in Salt Lake City sentenced Mitchell to life without parole for kidnapping then 14-year-old Smart from her bedroom and holding her captive for nine months. At trial, Smart testified that Mitchell raped her daily.
Mitchell spent his remaining months in Terre Haute in near-solitary conditions at the facility’s Special Confinement Unit, also known as the SHU. Corrections staff placed him there for his own protection after a brutal assault in late May, according to witnesses of that incident. A second took place inside the SHU, they said.
In September, WFIU/WTIU News sent a list of questions to representatives at the Terre Haute prison, including what, if anything, they were doing to protect Mitchell and to find out how the previous incidents occurred.
A spokesperson responded with a link to a website about open records but did not acknowledge individual questions.
Read more: Mitchell sentenced to life in Smart kidnapping
Staff didn’t intervene as a prisoner assaulted Mitchell in a recreation area known as the west yard on May 26, according to four people who witnessed the attack.
“I got up and walked over expecting the guards to come running but they never did,” prisoner Keith Gace wrote in a letter to WFIU/WTIU News.
He found Mitchell kneeling on the ground, blood pouring from his head.
“I wasn't sure if he got stabbed or what," Gace wrote.
The attacker, Gace wrote, initially told him to mind his own business but backed down and left after Gace refused to leave Mitchell’s side: “I told him, ‘I’m not watching (you) beat up a hundred-pound, seventy-year-old,’” he wrote.
Gace wrote that the attacker had time to wash Mitchell’s blood off his hands and walk past two guards standing by at the yard’s gate.
Three other witnesses confirmed Gace’s account.
Gace, who is serving an 85-year sentence for manufacturing child pornography, criticized the overall security measures that placed Mitchell and the attacker in the same yard but defended the individual staffers on duty that day.
“In the guards’ defense, there is hardly ever a problem in that yard,” he wrote, adding that it had been about a year since the last major incident.
The penitentiary faces chronic staff shortages. The U.S. prison bureau cut wages for some workers there in February and temporarily froze hiring in May.
Last year, the U.S. Department of Justice released the findings of an investigation into the deaths of prisoners in federal custody. The Office of the Inspector General identified staff shortages as a major contributing factor.
The report found that due to shortages, searches for contraband, including weapons, weren’t being done as often as they should. It also found that custody staff weren’t making their security rounds as often as they should. It also found that the use of mandatory overtime resulted in staff who were less vigilant, less observant, and less able to respond to emergencies as quickly as they should.
Listen: Smart shares about her faith and kidnapping
Robert Jones, who is serving a life sentence for sexually abusing teenagers and young children, wrote that Mitchell was uniquely vulnerable given his advanced age and smaller size. Mitchell is 72 years old.
Something else that makes him vulnerable is his refusal to report attacks to prison staff, viewing the violence as some sort of divine judgement.
“When I asked him about being previously assaulted and stabbed, he said, ‘The Lord is passing judgement upon me here in this life for the things I have done. I deserve this. I will be with Him after this life,’” Jones quoted him as saying.
“Although I don’t believe he deserves to be assaulted or stabbed, I do respect his position, and I respect him, and wish him the best,” Jones wrote.
Listen: Smart calls Mitchell 'master at manipulation'
After the assault, guards took Mitchell to the Special Confinement Unit, or SHU, considered to be the most closely monitored and secure area of the prison.
Soon after arriving, however, Mitchell was attacked again, according to two people who were being held there at the time.
“The individual that you asked about is actually not far from me,” James Danis, an ex-gang member who was being housed in the SHU after being attacked himself, wrote in a letter that described the sounds of the assault echoing through the SHU.
"I believe his previous cellmate attacked him more than once. I was however too far to see—I could only hear,” he wrote.
A second prisoner reported the same thing, telling fellow inmates in the unit Mitchell previously occupied that he was found in a pool of blood.
After recovering in the SHU, Mitchell began working as an orderly, fellow prisoners said. They said he was refusing to go back to his previous unit.
Last week, guards transported Mitchell to the Federal Transfer Center-Oklahoma City, where he stayed for several days before being transferred to the Federal Correctional Institution-Lewisburg, a medium-security prison in central Pennsylvania, earlier this week, according to prison records.
“He is currently housed at our institution,” a Lewisburg official said Thursday.
Cathy Knapp contributed to this report.
This story has been updated.
