Righting an outrageous wrong — a sad, tragic (and totally preventable) tale

This is a sad story about the tragic and preventable death of a Florida State Prison nurse and the state’s vigorous effort to duck responsibility for it. Sharon Johnson’s 2019 death is the subject of a lawsuit by her family against the Florida Department of Corrections.

For a year, the FDOC slow-walked the release of an internal review into the death of Johnson, killed by an off-duty corrections officer in a DUI crash.

The report has finally come to light through the relentless work of a private law firm, Gainesville-based Avera & Smith. It all but confirms the corrections officer got very drunk on prison grounds over several hours when he shouldn’t have even been there, was repeatedly in the company of on-duty co-workers, was cautioned by supervisors, and eventually drove off.

He was the only other driver in the collision that killed Johnson, who was on her way to work her shift at the prison.

Yet in a shocking outcome that smacks of circling the wagons, the modern version of a still-vibrant “ol’ boy network,” and intense institutional whitewashing, the agency’s Inspector General concluded allegations against the correctional officer and a supervisor were unfounded.

This is not a good look for the DOC, one of the Executive Branch agencies under the authority of the Governor.

Gov. Ron DeSantis has long been a staunch supporter of law enforcement, but he also has shown a smart and rigid refusal to tolerate misconduct — and such misconduct seems apparent here.

Now the law firm of Avera & Smith is moving forward with a lawsuit it filed early last year on behalf of the victim’s adult children. The litigation was effectively on hold while the attorneys tried to wrest the Inspector General’s report from FDOC’s tightly clenched fist, despite its unquestionable status as a public record under Florida’s Sunshine Law.

The questions it raises will undoubtedly be the focus of upcoming depositions.

This case has been a tragedy since the early morning hours of April 23, 2019, when off-duty Correctional Officer Justin Stone, then 29, crashed head-on into a vehicle driven by nurse Johnson, 52. The victim was on her way to work at Florida State Prison in Bradford County – just across the river from Union Correctional Institution, the prison where Stone had been on duty until just hours earlier.

Johnson was killed almost instantly, and even after the lapse of time it took for Stone to be transported to a hospital, his blood-alcohol level was an eye-popping .223, nearly three times the legal limit.

That registers as out of control by any safety standard.

Evidence from the vehicles shows that Johnson was traveling the legal speed limit of 55 mph, but Stone was driving over 79 mph when the vehicles collided.

Despite his excessive speed and high blood alcohol level clearly causing the death of this innocent victim, Stone was allowed to plead to only a misdemeanor DUI charge. His only real consequence: He lost his job at FDOC a year later – but the agency’s responsibility and accountability should not stop there.

Several factors make this case particularly heinous. Stone — whose job it is to protect the innocent from some of Florida’s worst criminals — was driving with a blood-alcohol level almost triple the legal limit for DUI and well over the speed limit.

The Inspector General’s report gives every indication that Stone got off work but remained on prison grounds for several hours in the company of other FDOC employees, drinking what may well have been moonshine and strolling in and out of the prison several times — in clear violation of policy.

FDOC has an appropriate policy that if one of its employees suspects another employee has been drinking, the department must contact their emergency contact and have the person driven home.

Nothing like that happened in this case, though multiple other staff at the prison saw and interacted with Stone on that fateful night at the prison.

The Inspector General’s report says during the investigation “there were several administrative violations noted.” That’s putting it mildly. The report found multiple instances where prison gates were left wide open at the maximum-security prison, where staff walked in without anyone showing ID, where staff entered with unapproved drink cups, and where on-duty staff were in the parking lot for hours rather than at their assigned posts.

On several occasions that night, Stone was seen in the parking lot and entering and exiting the prison carrying 44-ounce foam cups. At one point, around 1 a.m., a captain was advised that Stone was in the parking lot “making a scene,” and the captain told Stone to go home. Stone went back inside the prison at least twice after that and remained on its property in the parking lot for several hours.

In a sworn statement, a lieutenant told investigators that Stone had told him “that he (Stone) had been drinking moonshine that evening.” An inspection of Stone’s vehicle at the scene of the fatal crash “revealed three clear mason jars with an unknown liquid and what appeared to be cinnamon sticks inside the jars” – a practice common when people are drinking moonshine.

But apparently, because the Inspector General wasn’t there to literally taste the liquid, charges that Stone had alcohol on prison grounds were deemed “unfounded.”

Shortly after the tragic accident, DOC went into full defensive mode. From the start, the department tried to distance itself from Stone’s actions, noting he was off duty and the accident happened five miles from the prison. That doesn’t account for the fact that much of his significant alcohol consumption appears to have taken place on prison grounds, apparently in the company of other on-duty DOC employees, at a time when regulations said he should not have been there.

Perhaps more indicative of how the law enforcement/corrections community was determined to protect its own, initial comments from the Florida Highway Patrol put the actual blame for the crash on Johnson – the responsible nurse who had not been drinking, was driving the speed limit and was the innocent victim of Stone’s reckless and irresponsible behavior.

FHP told media only that Johnson’s vehicle had crossed the center line, not that Stone’s erratic high-speed driving forced her to do so in a desperate attempt to avoid a collision. Perhaps even more shocking, FHP didn’t even attempt to do a “black box” download of the drunk driver’s vehicle and said it was unable to perform a download of Johnson’s vehicle because it had been manufactured in 2012.

And so, the wagons circled.

Prior to retaining counsel, Johnson’s family settled with Stone’s insurance company long before they knew the details of the correctional officer’s deadly behavior that night. Now that they are armed with the Inspector General’s report and other materials, the Avera & Smith law firm is pushing ahead with litigation.

The Department of Corrections asserts that because Stone was off-duty and the accident occurred five miles from the prison, they had no control over Stone’s actions – and therefore no legal liability. The Avera & Smith lawsuit says otherwise.

“FDOC failed to reasonably supervise its employee, Justin Stone, while on the premises,” the complaint reads. “FDOC knew or should have known of the necessity and opportunity for exercising control over Justin Stone due to the unreasonable, foreseeable risk his conduct posed of causing great bodily harm to others.”

The DOC Inspector General’s dubious finding of “unfounded” on any serious wrongdoing seems to fly in the face of the evidence, the facts and the truth. In reality, what is strongly suggested is that Sharon Johnson was the victim of a prison guard who got drunk on prison grounds in the company of his co-workers and then sped into the path of her car — apparently enabled by those other corrections peers or supervisor(s) who did nothing to responsibly intervene.

Under sovereign immunity laws, lawsuits against state agencies can only recover up to $300,000, so it’s likely Johnson’s children will have to turn to the Legislature for a claims bill to recover a more realistic amount for a preventable fatal crash that deprived the victim of her life and her family of her presence in theirs.

Money is one way the legal process can balance the scales of justice when a tragic injustice of this magnitude occurs.

And, even in an era when claims bills are not generally embraced, this one would and should be viewed differently – because it is the right thing to do, to right an outrageous wrong.