Florida KKK members accused of plotting to kill black inmate

Three Ku Klux Klan members who worked at a Florida prison were charged Thursday with plotting to kill a black inmate after his release in retaliation for a fight, officials said Thursday, in a case that marks the latest incident for the state’s troubled prison system.

The three men — Thomas Jordan Driver, 25; David Elliot Moran, 47; and 42-year-old Charles Thomas Newcomb — were each arrested and charged with one state count of conspiracy to commit murder, Florida Attorney General Pam Bondi's office said in a written statement.

The attorney general's office said the murder plot started after Driver, an officer at the Department of Corrections Reception and Medical Center in rural northern Florida, had a fight with the inmate.

Moran is currently an officer sergeant at that facility. Newcomb was fired in 2013 for failing to meet training requirements, according to the department.

Bondi's office said the three were also members of the Traditional American Knights of the Ku Klux Klan.

Mark Potok, of the Southern Poverty Law Center, told The Washington Post on Thursday that the American Knights branch has about 100 or fewer members, though it has claimed a larger membership.

Potok also told the Post that cases in which law enforcement or corrections officials had been found to be members of the KKK had been “very, very rare” over the past decade. The KKK was formed in 1865 and has since carried out murders, lynchings and bombings in an attempt to "oppose the civil rights movement and to preserve segregation," the Southern Poverty Law Center said. 

The specifics of the alleged plot to murder the former inmate were not immediately clear, as the arrest warrants remained sealed. 

The wide-ranging investigation included the FBI, U.S. Customs and Border Patrol and various state and local agencies. The FBI's office in Jacksonville said it would not comment on an open investigation.

Driver and Moran each had reported incidents of bad behavior in their employee files, according to the Department of Corrections. Moran, the officer sergeant, was reprimanded in 1999 and 2006 for conduct unbecoming of a public employee, and Driver had been cited for willful violation of rules.

Last fall, prison system officials fired nearly 50 employees, including several over allegations that they punched and beat inmates.

The deaths of inmates Randall Jordan-Aparo and Darren Rainey also drew attention. Jordan-Aparo was reportedly gassed while in a confinement cell at the Franklin Correctional Institution.

Rainey, a mentally ill prisoner, was punished in 2012 with a shower so hot that his skin separated from his body. Witnesses said guards at Dade Correctional Institution left Rainey alone for two hours in the locked, scalding hot shower as punishment for defecating in his cell and refusing to clean it up. The warden at the facility was fired.

Department of Corrections Secretary Julie Jones, who was hired late last year to lead the troubled agency, called the arrests "disquieting."

"We are moving swiftly to terminate the employees arrested today and working closely with Office of the Attorney General to assist in their prosecution," she said in a statement.

"Our Department has zero tolerance for racism or prejudice of any kind. The actions of these individuals are unacceptable and do not, in any way, represent the thousands of good, hardworking honorable correctional officers employed at the Department of Corrections," the statement read.

The case will be prosecuted in Columbia County in northern Florida. Driver and Moran are being held in Union County jail. Newcomb is in nearby Alachua County Jail on a $750,000 bond.

Al Jazeera and The Associated Press