WARREN, Maine — The brother of a prisoner who was murdered more than two years ago by another inmate has sued the warden and deputy warden, saying top prison officials were aware the perpetrator had vowed to kill child molesters.
The lawsuit was filed Feb. 29 in U.S. District Court in Bangor by Caleb Boland of Jefferson on behalf of the estate of his deceased brother, Micah Boland. Named as defendants in the lawsuit are former Maine State Prison Warden Rodney Bouffard and Deputy Warden Michael Tausek.
Micah Boland, 37, died Feb. 28, 2014, in his cell at the Warren prison after fellow inmate Richard A. Stahursky entered the cell, tied him up, beat him — breaking bones and knocking out teeth — and then stabbed him 87 times with a homemade knife.
Stahursky, 37, was sentenced in December 2015 to life in prison for murdering Boland. At the sentencing hearing, Stahursky said he slept better knowing that there was one less child molester. He said he murdered Boland to “strike fear into the hearts” of all other sex offenders in the prison.
When he was killed, Boland had served about six years of a 22-year sentence for sexually assaulting a 4-year-old girl in 2007 in Liberty.
Stahursky has been in prison since 2002, when he was sentenced to 20 years in prison for an armed robbery of a convenience store in Fort Fairfield. But he had time added over the last decade for setting a fire at the prison, two separate stabbings of inmates with shanks and assaulting a prison guard.
Stahursky said during his December 2015 sentencing that the prison administration also should be held accountable for Boland’s death. He told Justice Daniel Billings that even though he had twice assaulted prisoners with a shank and had warned them that he was planning to kill other inmates, he was allowed to remain in the general population with sex offenders.
The lawsuit states that the warden and deputy warden met with Stahursky after a homemade knife, known as a shank, was found in his mattress in 2013. Top prison officials asked Stahursky whether he could assure them that he would not stab anyone if they let him out of segregation and into the general prison population, but Stahursky stated that he could not do so because they knew how he felt about child sex offenders, the lawsuit states.
In 2014, Stahursky and Boland both were assigned to the same section of the prison.
That action created a substantial risk of serious harm to Boland, the lawsuit states. Prison officials were deliberately indifferent to Boland’s safety, which violated Boland’s right not to be subjected to cruel and unusual punishment, the lawsuit states.
The lawsuit seeks unspecified damages, including punitive damages.
The estate is represented by attorney John Gause of Bangor.
The state has yet to file a response to the lawsuit, and Maine Corrections Department Deputy Commissioner Jody Breton declined comment Tuesday.