Staff file photo / Ed Runyan ... Rondell Harris, 34, of East Cleveland, stands during a hearing earlier this year in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court, where Harris pleaded guilty to rape, kidnapping, tampering with evidence and disrupting public services in the rape of a woman deputy in the county jail.

YOUNGSTOWN — Mahoning County officials deny allegations by a woman deputy that they failed to take “reasonable and appropriate steps” to prevent former jail inmate Rondell Harris from raping her while she worked in the lockup last year.

The attorneys for Mahoning County and three sheriff’s officials — William Cappabianca, Kenneth Kountz and Joseph Hood — filed a response in U.S. District Court recently to the lawsuit the woman deputy filed.

She was raped May 5, 2022.

The case also was moved from Mahoning County Common Pleas Court to federal court in Akron, where Judge Judge John R. Adams is presiding.

The deputy, whose real name is not being used in the litigation, alleged that jail officials did not take “reasonable and appropriate steps to secure an inmate whom they knew was dangerous.”

If they had, “jail supervisors could have prevented the victimization” of the deputy, the suit alleges.

Sheriff Jerry Greene is not named as a defendant.

Harris pleaded guilty to rape, kidnapping, tampering with evidence and disrupting public services May 1, 2023, in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court and was sentenced to 26 to 31 1/2 years in prison. The suit was filed May 3, 2023. The case is set for a jury trial in about a year.

The county’s response agrees that Harris was written up on the second night he was in the jail in April 2022 and was issued discipline for the behavior. Harris also was placed on suicide watch, but the county filing denies that jail supervisors “failed to transfer him back to the disciplinary unit” and denies that Harris “unjustifiably remained in the medical unit.”

The county response agrees that Harris previously had been convicted of gross sexual imposition.

The county response denies “for want of knowledge” an allegation that Harris “stood close to the door of his cell naked” and engaged in a sex act while the woman deputy was assigned to guard Harris in the medical unit. The response also denies that Harris did something similar in front of five other deputies in early 2022 and that each deputy reported the behavior.

NOTES FROM HARRIS

The county response acknowledges that a letter from Harris to another woman deputy in mid-April 2022 included in the lawsuit “appears to be a copy of part of a letter by Harris” to a woman jail staff member. The letter includes the statement: “I’m deeply attracted 2 you physically.”

The county response agrees that the woman staff member gave the letter to a male deputy on duty, and that deputy reported the note in the jail’s computer system.

The county response denies the allegation that after the letter was received by jail officials, and “knowing of Harris’ deviant sexual behavior and desires … jail staff and supervisors moved Harris from the more secured cell located nearer to the front of the unit to another cell within the medical unit — a cell that was out of range of security cameras and less secure than other cells in the unit.”

The response calls the allegation that a second letter to the same woman staff member was turned in by jail staff members and logged in to the computer system for jail supervisors to review “vague, ambiguous, and / or unclear as written and deny for want of knowledge of the allegations.”

The county response denies “or deny for want of knowledge the allegation” that in mid-April, Harris wrote a note to a woman deputy “asking her to smuggle drugs and a phone into the jail for his use.”

The county response denied that around May 3, 2022, Harris handed “yet another note to a different woman deputy.”

The lawsuit alleges that in the May 3 letter, Harris stated that he was aware that when another woman deputy besides the rape victim brought him food, his cell was out of range of surveillance cameras. The county’s response states that the letter “speaks for itself.”

The county response denied and or denied “for want of knowledge the allegation” that the woman deputy “bluffed to Harris that there were male deputies assisting her on her shift that evening” and that the deputy “noted her fear that Harris would attempt to touch her or harm her if he knew she was alone.”

SUPERVISORS WARNED

The county response admits that a copy of a letter from Sgt. Henry Budaker warned jail supervisors April 12, 2022, that Harris was on suicide watch after making comments about being homicidal and “self gratifies himself towards female staff on a regular basis.” He had been booked into the jail April 6, the letter states.

The county response denies “for want of knowledge” the allegation that Harris previously was convicted in Marion County for a sexual attack on a social worker while he was incarcerated.

It denies the allegation that jail policies require jail supervisors to “check the prior deputy’s log within a few hours of her shift” and that “no supervisors took appropriate actions to adequately secure Harris or move him to another cell within security-camera range — despite being warned by at last two separate notes that Harris was aware that he was off-camera and was likely to engage in illegal actions in that cell.”

The county response denies “for want of knowledge” the allegation that on May 5, Lt. Salvatore Pascarella visited the medical unit where Harris was being kept and asked the deputy who was later raped “why Harris was still on the medical unit, and asked why he had not been transferred back to the disciplinary unit.”

As to the lawsuit’s allegation that the deputy who was raped was “assigned to guard the unit” where Harris was kept “alone — as female deputies working in male units often were,” the county response admitted “only that on May 5, 2022,” the deputy who was raped “had the sole medical housing post assignment,” but “deputies assigned to other posts were available to assist” the woman deputy.

THE CRIME UNFOLDS

The county response denies “for want of knowledge” all of the descriptions of how the rape unfolded — Harris refusing to give her his food tray and hair clippers, forcing her to approach his cell to collect the items, and Harris grabbing her, throwing her radio in the corridor and pulling her into his cell.

The county response denies the allegation that the woman deputy “was alone” and “no one came to help her.”

The county response denies that deputies assigned to work the central control that monitors the video cameras in the jail failed to fulfill their responsibilities. The county response denied “for want of knowledge” that the woman deputy would not have been raped and nearly strangled to death if the deputies assigned to monitor the cameras “had done so.”

The response denies “for want of knowledge” that the woman deputy was “locked in the cell for at least 10 minutes, until two sergeants finally arrived and found Harris standing at the entrance door to the housing unit.”

The county response states that physical evidence from Harris was collected and “expressly” denies that the rape “could have been avoided and occurred, in part, due to the deliberate indifference, recklessness and negligence by Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office personnel.”

CHANGES MADE

The county response agrees that Sheriff Greene made reorganizational changes to the corrections division of the sheriff’s office and took “other corrective measures” after the rape.

The county’s response states that the woman deputy has worked for the sheriff’s office more than 10 years and has “no history of employment discipline at the Mahoning County Sheriff’s Office.”

Filing the suit on behalf of the woman deputy are attorneys Subodh Chandra of Cleveland and Martin Desmond, a former Mahoning County assistant prosecutor who unsuccessfully ran for county prosecutor in 2020.

Attorneys Daniel Downey, Jennifer Meyer and Angelica Jarmusz of New Albany, Ohio, are representing the county and the three sheriff’s employees.

erunyan@vindy.com