Coming up. As a result of being strapped into the chair, often for hours at a time, they suffered pain and bodily injury as a consequence.

For Vault Studios, I'm Will Johnson. You're listening to The Daily Crime.

Developing right now, an unsealed federal indictment alleges Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill

had county inmates placed in restraint chairs for several hours on several occasions.

The incidents described in the indictment all took place in 2020, and each inmate claims being

strapped in the chair for hours caused physical pain and resulted in bodily injury.

That was the news out of Clayton County, Georgia, just at the end of April, a sheriff arrested

and facing felony charges.

I'm joined by Joe Hinky, a reporter at WXIA 11 alive in Atlanta.

Joe, what can you tell us about these charges?

Yes, the charges here, most people in town are considering them rather serious because they are in federal court.

They're for felonies. He actually turned himself into FBI agents as our understanding from a spokesman with the FBI.

But the charges relate to practices, alleged practices at the Clayton County Jail. Sheriff Hill is the Clayton County Sheriff, of course.

And at the jail, he's accused in a federal indictment of using a restraint chair on four inmates

on four separate occasions last year. And while the indictment lays out sort of a process where a restraint chair legally can be used under federal law, he's being accused of using it illegally in violation of the inmates' civil rights, that these were inmates that were facing charges.

They had not been convicted of the crimes that they were facing charges for, but that he used it as a form of punishment,

that he prosecutors, federal prosecutors say he would put inmates in this chair for hours at a time.

There was one claim in the federal indictment that someone needed to use the restroom. He didn't let them out

of the chair and they just ended up relieving themselves in the chair. There was another case where

he's accused or quoted in the indictment of telling someone basically don't come back to my county

and commit crimes again. If you do and you end up in this jail again, I'll put you in this

chair for 16 hours on that future occasion. So that's what the accusations center around is this

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