DUBLIN, CA — Darrell Wayne Smith, former correctional officer at the now-closed federal Dublin women’s prison in the East Bay, pleaded not guilty last week to “15 counts of sexual abuse of incarcerated women, including three new charges,” according to KQED.
Smith is set to go on trial in March 2025 and faces a potential life sentence if convicted.
“We remain steadfast in our commitment to root out sexual assault (in federal prisons)…and hold to account those who so egregiously violate their duty,” Deputy Attorney General Lisa Monaco said in a statement regarding Smith’s charges.
KQED reported the former correctional officer appeared in federal court with his attorney, Naomi Chung, for an arraignment hearing.
The arraignment on a superseding indictment detailed “his alleged encounters with five women in their cells, a laundry area and a janitor’s closet,” describing “14 incidents during which Smith allegedly engaged in illegal sexual contact with inmates, including digitally penetrating a victim’s anus without her consent, resulting in bodily injury.”
According to Alex Hall of KQED, Smith was arrested in Florida of May 2023 and initially charged with 12 counts of sexual abuse involving “three women in his custody between 2019 and 2021. In July of 2024, a federal grand jury issued a superseding indictment that “included two new allegations of sexual assault against two additional women dating back to as early as 2016.”
“This superseding indictment is the latest product of the Department’s ongoing work to seek justice for victims of sexual assault at FCI Dublin,” Monaco stated, noting Smith allegedly “engaged in appalling criminal acts when he sexually abused those in his care and custody.”
This issue of superseding indictment, according to Hall, alleged a federal civil rights violation “stemming from Smith’s aggravated sexual abuse of one of the women.”
Smith is one of the eight former FCI Dublin correctional officers—the prison’s chaplain and warden were also implicated—to be charged with sexual abuse, as seven other officers have already been sentenced, according to the facts of a class-action lawsuit against the facility.
On top of the class-action lawsuit filed on behalf of the incarcerated women scheduled for June 2025, “dozens of individual damages lawsuits have also been filed against the agency and its current and former staff,” said KQED.
Last month, U.S. District Judge Yvonne Gonzalez Rogers unsealed a report on FCI Dublin provided by Wendy Still, an appointed special master in April 2024 to oversee prison conditions.
“Management’s failure to ensure staff adhered to (the Bureau of Prison) policy put the health, safety and liberty of (adults in custody) at great risk for many years,” the report read.
“It is unconscionable that any correctional agency could allow incarcerated individuals under their control and responsibility to be subject to the conditions that existed at FCI-Dublin for such an extended period of time without correction,” the report added.
Despite the U.S. Bureau of Prisons announcing the closure of FCI Dublin following “years of sexual misconduct allegations and scandals,” Still continued to have concerns that “many conditions that existed at this facility appear to be longstanding and systemic in nature.”
Within weeks after, KQED reported that thousands of inmates were transferred to other facilities throughout the country.
Deputy Director of the Federal Bureau of Prisons, William Lonthrop, wrote in a court declaration there were no “immediate plans” to reopen the facility, but if overcrowding or other issues become prominent, the reopening would no longer accommodate female inmates.
U.S. District Judge Rogers said there is a need for proper resolution for the women previously incarcerated at FCI Dublin, noting, “You want this court to wipe its hands clean and go its merry way with respect to those hundreds of individuals that are out there?” Rogers asked federal attorneys in the August hearing.
Susan Beaty, an attorney representing the class of incarcerated women, told KQED after the hearing, “What we heard was the judge say really clearly that the issues are ongoing and that the (Bureau of Prisons) needs to be accountable for the harms that they caused.”
