JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri officials have paid a six-figure bill to end a dispute over injuries suffered by a prisoner who was attacked by another inmate in 2018.
Attorney General Andrew Bailey’s office reported Thursday that a check for $330,111 was issued in connection with convicted murderer Christopher Spates, who sued the state in 2018 after he was attacked in his cell at the South Central Correctional Center in Licking.
In his suit, Spates said he was beaten in his cell by another inmate. At the time, his hands were cuffed behind his back, preventing him from defending himself.
He argued the altercation was not a surprise because the two had fought earlier the same day, but correctional officers disregarded that information and put the two in a cell together anyway, with Spates cuffed and the other man unrestrained.
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The November payout from the state’s legal expense fund comes as the department is facing the fallout of an inmate death at the Jefferson City Correctional Center in December 2023.
Video of the 2023 incident shows the late Othel Moore lying motionless in a holding area with a mask covering his face, hands restrained behind his back and legs bound together as a guard watches from outside the cell. Four former staffers at the prison have pleaded not guilty to second-degree murder. Charges against a fifth were dropped. The warden of the prison was fired.
A criminal complaint alleges that guards pepper-sprayed Moore, placed a mask over his face and left him in a position that caused him to suffocate.
Moore’s mother and sister also have filed a wrongful death lawsuit.
Spates is serving a life sentence for killing a woman outside of a St. Louis fast-food restaurant in 2011 before she could testify in an assault case.
Surveillance video from the restaurant’s parking lot showed Young entering a White Castle restaurant and returning to her car with food. The recording shows Spates running across the lot to the driver’s side door and opening fire. She was shot 11 times.
Spates was initially represented pro bono by Ginger Gooch, then an attorney with Husch Blackwell. Gooch is now a member of the Missouri Supreme Court.
In court, his attorneys argued that the correctional officers violated Spates' Eighth Amendment guarantee to be protected from attack by other inmates. A federal jury agreed.
The St. Louis Post-Dispatch tracks the data behind reported homicides on an interactive map that allows readers to explore information in various ways.
Christopher Spates, of St. Louis, was sentenced to life in prison without parole in the death of a woman at a White Castle restaurant in St. Louis in 2011.
Kurt Erickson
Jefferson City reporter
