Former West Virginia officers sentenced to decades in prison for their
role in deadly inmate assault
[July 10, 2025]
CHARLESTON, W.Va. (AP) — Two former West Virginia correctional officers
were sentenced to decades in prison on Wednesday for their roles in an
assault that resulted in the death of an inmate.
Mark Holdren, 41, was sentenced to 20 years in prison and Johnathan
Walters, 33, was sentenced to 21 years in prison for the March 2022
attack in the Southern Regional Jail, according to a press release from
the U.S. Department of Justice.
Quantez Burks, 37, was a pretrial detainee who died less than a day
after he was booked into the jail in Beaver on a wanton endangerment
charge, according to court documents.
When Burks tried to push past an officer to leave his housing unit, he
was taken to an interview room where he was handcuffed and restrained
while officers including Holdren and Walters assaulted him. Burks was
struck in the head multiple times, kicked and pepper-sprayed, according
to the Justice Department.
After the assault, Burks became unresponsive, so officers including
Walters carried him to a different pod. Walters swung Burks' head into a
metal door to open it and the officers dropped his body onto a concrete
cell floor. He was pronounced deceased a short time later by emergency
medical personnel.
Along with their guilty pleas, Holdren and Walters admitted that the
interview room where they took Burks had no surveillance cameras. They
also knew that officers used this room and other “blind spots” in the
jail to assault inmates accused of misconduct.
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The Southern Regional Jail in Beaver, W.Va., is seen in this undated
photo. (Rick Barbero/The Register-Herald via AP, File)
Holdren and Walters are two of six correctional officers who were
indicted in this case. They include ex-jail supervisor Chad Lester
who was sentenced in May to more than 17 years in federal prison for
helping cover up the assault. Prior to the indictment of the six
defendants, two other former correctional officers pleaded guilty to
conspiring to use unreasonable force against Burks.
The state medical examiner’s office attributed Burks’ primary cause
of death to natural causes, prompting his family to seek a private
autopsy. The family’s attorney revealed at a news conference in late
2022 that the second autopsy found Burks had multiple areas of blunt
force trauma on his body.
The case drew scrutiny to conditions and deaths at the jail, and in
November 2023, West Virginia agreed to pay $4 million to settle a
class-action lawsuit filed by inmates there. In recommending a
default judgment in the lawsuit, a federal magistrate judge cited
the intentional destruction of records in the case. That led to the
firing of former Division of Corrections and Rehabilitation
Executive Officer Brad Douglas and Homeland Security Chief Counsel
Phil Sword.
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