Jim Justice and new Department of Homeland Security Secretary Mark Sorsaia pushed back Wednesday, saying there was no intentional destruction of documents.ĭuring the Wednesday presser, Sorsaia alluded to discipline taken against state employees involved with the snafu. And Aboulhosn’s order was enough to scare the scat out of the Governor’s Office. “The intentional decisions to not preserve evidence, and to allow evidence to be destroyed was not done by low-level employees of the WVDCR but was perpetrated by the highest persons in the chain of command…”Ī judge calling for summary judgment - which basically means awarding the plaintiffs in the class action lawsuit everything they are asking for - is extraordinary. “…The failure to preserve the evidence that was destroyed in this case was intentionally done and not simply an oversight by the witnesses,” Aboulhosn wrote. Magistrate Judge Omar Aboulhosn accused officials with the Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation of intentionally destroying evidence, such as grievances from inmates and emails from current and former DCR employees. The big story last week was a federal magistrate recommending for summary judgment against the state in a federal class action lawsuit began last year over conditions at the Southern Regional Jail near Beckley.
