This item has nothing to do with higher education. But indulge me.

Murder Suspect, Trial Witness Mistakenly Put in Same Cell

Friday, September 18, 2015

LIMA, Ohio (AP) — A jailed murder suspect and another inmate who was about to testify against him got into a fight in a holding cell after a guard mistakenly put the two together, officials said.

The men weren’t handcuffed when the guard put them in a cell during a break in the trial this week, and an investigation will be conducted on how it happened, Allen County Sheriff Sam Crish told The Lima News. He said authorities broke up the altercation within two minutes, and the men suffered only minor injuries.

The holding cell was out of public view, but the fight was recorded on video that the judge allowed the jury in the suspect’s trial to see Thursday after denying a defense request for a mistrial because of the fight.

WLIO-TV says the video shows defendant Markelus Carter punch the other inmate, who is then seen putting Carter in a headlock and throwing some punches before Carter bites him on the arm and guards break up the fight.

Court records show Carter, 46, is on trial on aggravated murder and weapons charges. He has pleaded not guilty in the 2009 slaying of Kenneth Warrington. Prosecutors say Carter was upset that Warrington was having a relationship with his ex-girlfriend.

P.S. Coincidentally, one of John Dillinger’s most famous prison breaks occurred in Lima and cost the Allen County sheriff his life. For a long time, Lima was one of those Midwestern cities known as “Little Chicago,” but that nickname was almost as commonplace as cities’ claims to being the “Paris” of their regions. In the late 19th and early 20th centuries, Lima was the center of the Lima-Indiana oil field, the highest producing field in the world until almost the Great Depression, when fields in Oklahoma and Texas began to out-produce it. There are still small wells operating in the seemingly endless corn and soybean fields across the dozen or so rural counties surrounding the city. One of John D. Rockefeller’s original refineries is still operating on the southwest side of the city, but Standard Oil sold it to another company that then sold it to BP, and several years ago, BP sold it to Husky, a Canadian corporation heavily invested in the tar sands.