A man held at the Anchorage Correctional Complex has died after authorities say his cellmate severely beat him, in a case involving mental health concerns.
William Farmer, 36, died Monday at an Anchorage hospital, according to an Alaska State Troopers statement. He is the first Alaska inmate to die this year.
The Alaska Department of Law said 33-year-old Lawrence Fenumiai is now charged with second-degree murder in Farmer’s death.
According to a charging document against Fenumiai, jail staff first noticed the incident just after 6 p.m. on Dec. 17. A correctional officer said he looked through a cell door and saw Fenumiai atop Farmer, punching him in the head. The officer banged on the window and ordered Fenumiai to stop as he awaited backup.
Fenumiai allegedly didn’t stop punching Farmer until more officers arrived. Three minutes after the first officer arrived, Fenumiai was restrained and removed from the cell. Medics were called for Farmer, who was unconscious and taken to Providence Alaska Medical Center.
Another inmate also in the cell told troopers that Farmer had arrived within the last day. He said on Dec. 17 Farmer had been lying on the floor and talking to himself. Fenumiai, he said, climbed down from his top bunk in the cell, told Farmer to “shut the (expletive) up,” then began striking him, according to the charging document.
Megan Edge, director of the Alaska Prison Project at the American Civil Liberties Union of Alaska, said it’s rare for an Alaska inmate to fatally assault another.
“One in a year would be unusual,” Edge said. “Two in a year is exceptionally unusual and very concerning.”
Farmer’s death comes nearly a year after troopers said they were investigating the death of Anchorage Correctional Complex inmate Joshua Zimmerman as a homicide. Troopers spokesman Austin McDaniel had no updates Tuesday on that investigation, but said it's “still active and ongoing.”
In a Wednesday response to emailed questions, state Department of Corrections officials said staff evaluate all major incidents at Alaska correctional facilities alongside investigations by troopers.
“The safety and security of all individuals housed in any of our facilities is our top priority,” DOC officials said. “We are constantly evaluating best practices, which is evident in the fact that occurrences of this nature are rare.”
Court records show that Farmer and Fenumiai had taken different paths to last month’s deadly encounter.
Anchorage police said Farmer had been arrested Dec. 5 in a string of robberies at Midtown businesses, including two in November during which he allegedly pepper-sprayed employees.
Fenumiai had last been charged in May with a misdemeanor assault in Juneau, during which he allegedly punched a man in the head and destroyed a smartphone.
Edge, with the ACLU, said the two men shouldn’t have been in a cell together on Dec. 17 in the first place.
DOC officials said Fenumiai was initially held at the Lemon Creek Correctional Center in Juneau, then transferred to the Anchorage jail on June 23 to be mentally evaluated at the Alaska Psychiatric Institute. He spent some of his Southcentral Alaska time at the Goose Creek Correctional Center in the Matanuska-Susitna Borough.
Records show Fenumiai was ordered to be transported from Goose Creek to API on Nov. 13. The Juneau assault case was dismissed on Dec. 13, after Fenumiai was found incompetent to stand trial.
A second transport order was issued that day – four days before the reported assault – for Fenumiai to be sent to Juneau. But he never got moved.
“What happened in the system that left him stuck in Anchorage and not transported back to Juneau when the charges were dropped?” Edge said.
Corrections officials didn’t directly answer a question about why Fenumiai wasn’t transported to Juneau before the assault. They noted that his transport order was vacated on Dec. 20, after the reported assault happened.
“Mr. Fenumiai has been in specialized housing, without incident, during the entire period of his incarceration,” DOC officials said.
Edge – a former DOC spokeswoman under previous Gov. Bill Walker – said the jail houses a large and diverse population, with many people held for uncertain durations of time. The Anchorage Daily News and ProPublica reported Tuesday that times to resolve major cases in Alaska have ballooned, with a majority of inmates statewide now in pretrial custody without being convicted of a crime.
Edge said the situation is complicated by widespread delays in freeing inmates after judges order their release. That leads to severe overcrowding at the Anchorage Correctional Complex, she said, including the triple-bunking described in Fenumiai’s charging document.
“You usually have multiple people to a cell, and sometimes you have people that are vulnerable, who should not be in general population,” she said. “And that becomes especially dangerous for everybody there, and traumatic for everybody there.”
According to the charges against Fenumiai, he told an investigator that Farmer had irritated him by refusing multiple demands to be silent.
“Lawrence stated that it looked like Farmer did not want to stop talking so he just started hitting him,” the charges said.
According to the charges, when an investigator asked Fenumiai if he wanted to kill Farmer, he said yes and added that Farmer had not struck him. When asked if he was injured, Fenumiai allegedly said that his hands were sore.
Edge noted that the department had not posted an online death notification for Farmer on its website, despite the statement from troopers. A DOC spokesperson said Farmer was not being considered an in-custody death because prosecutors released him to pretrial supervision on Dec. 23, nearly a week after the assault took place. Edge said that doesn’t make sense.
“DOC should be reporting his death because he died (as) a result of an assault that occurred inside of one of their institutions, that they failed to protect him in,” she said.
The ACLU is independently investigating Farmer’s death, Edge said, as it does all deaths of Alaska inmates. She extended her condolences to his loved ones.
“Our hearts go out to his family, who are left to deal with what's happened because of the failure in a lot of systems,” she said. “It's just – it's absolutely heartbreaking.”
Court records show Fenumiai remained in custody Wednesday at the Anchorage Correctional Complex.
