Teen sentenced for battering guard

By Kate McCardell

Published: November 27, 2007

A former Department of Juvenile Justice resident has been sentenced to five years in prison after being found guilty of battery on detention facility staff.

Eight-teen-year-old Justin Caldwell was found guilty by a Jackson County, Fla., jury Nov. 7 of battery on detention staff or commitment facility staff stemming from a February incident at Arthur G. Dozier School for Boys in Marianna, according to the Office of State Attorney Steve Meadows.

Caldwell was accused of elbowing, head-butting and kicking Dozier guard James Wooden Jr. during the incident, at which time Caldwell was a resident of the high-risk detention facility.

According to Caldwell’s attorney, Rick Reno, Caldwell was just five months away from being released from DJJ custody, after an incarceration that began almost five years ago, when he was 13.

Caldwell, according to his father, Mark Caldwell, initially began his DJJ incarceration at 13 after being found guilty of theft.

Mark Caldwell said it was a series of “petty accusations” that prolonged his son’s stay at various DJJ facilities, ultimately landing him at Dozier School.

He and Reno allege that Wooden’s accusations of battery were made to cover up an incident that occurred later that day, which involved a different guard, Alvin Speights.

Speights was accused of battering Caldwell and the incident in question was caught on surveillance footage.

After reviewing testimony and the surveillance footage, a Jackson County grand jury exonerated Speights last September, saying “Speights was justified in the use of force required to insure the protection and safety of himself and others and that no criminal charges are warranted against” him.

The incident that involved Speights occurred in a Dozier Intensive Supervision Program room, where Caldwell was sent to, as Wooden put it, “cool down” after the incident that has resulted in Caldwell’s five-year prison sentence.

According to the State Attorney’s Office, the five years sentence is the maximum allowed by statute. Florida law requires that an inmate serve at least 85 percent of his sentence.