TALLAHASSEE, Fla. (AP) - A prisoner with a history of beating other inmates will go on trial this week for allegedly beating his cellmate to death.
Shawn Rogers, 34, has asked to be put to death for his crime against Ricky Martin. Martin was found lying in a pool of blood in his cell at Santa Rosa Correctional Institution in 2012.
Critics blame the Department of Corrections for putting Rogers in a cell with Martin. Fellow inmates who witnessed the attack said authorities ignored warnings to stop it.
McKinley Lewis, a spokesman for the department, told the Miami Herald (http://tinyurl.com/pwax5o6) there was no system in place to identify inmates as predator or non-predator at the time.
The agency subsequently developed new classification policies making it "a national leader in implementing a sophisticated, data-driven system to make the best determination possible of which inmates can and cannot be housed together."
