OKLAHOMA CITY – A killer who sued Corrections Department officials for $30,000 in actual and compensatory damages for the loss of his personal property valued at $700 came away empty-handed.
John R. Powell, 69, convicted in Oklahoma County in 1984 of murder and five counts of armed robbery, apparently hasn’t availed himself of the prison library during his 38 years behind bars while serving a life sentence.
Powell filed a small claims lawsuit in Major County District Court on Dec. 2, 2020, alleging that some of his personal property went missing when he was transferred from the James Crabtree Correctional Center at Helena to the state penitentiary at McAlester.
The lost items included two ball caps, sweat pants, one new “sweat top,” a new fan, 200 “certificate degree” (cq), 100 “family pictures personal,” two new Bibles and a new dictionary. He valued his property at $700.
Powell asked the court to require the State of Oklahoma to return his property or to reimburse him for its loss. Named in the lawsuit were Warden Rick Whitten and “assistant warden C. Mayfield”.
Initially Powell sought $10,000 for the loss of his missing property, but later added $20,000 for compensatory damages, too, “for the constitutional violation and deprived of human needs, suff[ering] and damages, emotion[al] stress, pain, hurt…” In addition, in a Feb. 25, 2021, pleading he upped the value of his property to $800.
Major County Associate District Judge Timothy Haworth and the state Court of Civil Appeals both rejected Powell’s claim.
The defendants noted, and the courts affirmed, that Title 12, Section 1751(E) of the Oklahoma Statutes decree that “[n]o action by a plaintiff who is currently incarcerated in any jail or prison in the state may be brought against any person or entity under the small claims procedure.”
And as for “C. Mayfield,” Josh Ward, DOC’s public information manager, informed the Southwest Ledger, “I find no records of any such person within the agency.”