Inmate stabs sleeping cellmate 11 times, stomps on his head 19 times, avoids most serious charges

An inmate at the Louisville jail was charged with assault this weekend after he stabbed another inmate in the face 11 times and stomped on his head 19 times while he slept. Amazingly, the stabbed, stomped cellmate survived.

Ian Diontre James, 25, appeared in court on August 17, where a judge set his bond at $75,000. He is charged merely with first degree assault, not attempted murder.

James stabbed and stomped his cellmate at around 5 am on Saturday. “Footage from the cell showed James approaching the other inmate as he slept in his bed and stabbing him 11 times in the face with a ‘long, sharp object.'” James then pulled the inmate out of bed and stomped on his head nineteen times, causing him to lose consciousness for several minutes.

Two LMDC officers checked inside the cell after one of the officers overheard a “loud commotion.” The officers found James standing over top of the other inmate “stomping on his head multiple times.”

When James was removed from the cell and later restrained, he said the other inmate should “take a long sleep” and “hopes he never wakes up.”

The cellmate told officers he didn’t know why James attacked him, and that he did not know James outside of the facility. The cellmate suffered serious injuries and would have died without prompt medical care.

Some attacks against cellmates are committed by inmates who are already doing life sentences, and have nothing left to lose by killing their cellmate, because the maximum penalty they could face for killing someone is life in prison, the very sentence they are already serving. Many states have abolished the death penalty, and in other states, courts virtually never impose the death penalty even when it is theoretically available. Progressive legislators have sharply restricted solitary confinement in many states, viewing it as inhumane to inmates, even though an inmate in solitary confinement can’t kill his cellmate.

The death penalty prevents murderers from being able to commit more murders or other crimes while in prison. A 2016 Washington Post article gave the example of a murderer who “killed two senior citizens, got locked up,” killed his cellmate, and then “tried to extort money” from an elderly woman. If he had been executed for killing two people, he could never have killed his cellmate, and never gone on to commit more crimes.

So few executions are carried out these days that it is basically impossible to measure the extent to which executions cut the murder rate. But if murderers were regularly executed, that could save lives by deterring people from committing murder, and also keep murderers from killing again, such as killing their cellmate after they are convicted of murder.

Back when executions regularly occurred, several studies found that executions deter killings of innocent people. As the Associated Press noted in 2007, “Each execution deters an average of 18 murders, according to a 2003 nationwide study by professors at Emory University. (Other studies have estimated the deterred murders per execution at three, five, and 14).”

Some killers kill again and again until they are executed. One example is Kenneth McDuff, the “broomstick killer.” At the age of 19, after being paroled, McDuff and an accomplice kidnapped three teenagers. He shot and killed two boys, then killed a girl after raping her and torturing her with burns and a broomstick. Later, after being paroled yet again, he murdered additional women — as many as 15 women in several different states.

Some murderers continue to kill even at an advanced age. At the age of 76, Albert Flick killed a woman, stabbing her at least 11 times while her twin sons watched. He had previously been imprisoned from 1979 to 2004 for killing his wife by stabbing her 14 times in front of her daughter.

Marceline Harvey was arrested for killing again at age 83, after two prior convictions in New York State. Harvey, who gender-transitioned after being released from prison, was arrested after previously spending three decades in prison for killing one girlfriend, and before that, spending twenty years in prison for killing an earlier girlfriend. Twice, Harvey had been paroled and released after deliberately murdering someone.