The government is appealing a federal judge’s recent order requiring them to bear the majority of costs associated with court-mandated monitoring of the St. Thomas jail, which has been under some form of consent decree for more than 30 years.
Inmates and people in the custody of the V.I. Corrections Bureau on St. Thomas initially filed the lawsuit in 1994 amid unconstitutional conditions in the island’s corrections facilities, which, U.S. District Court Judge Curtis Gomez wrote in 2020, “ largely have remained unresolved for over twenty-five years.” Gomez noted that the court had found the Virgin Islands in contempt of the original consent decree four times. The settlement was amended in 2013 and 2015, leading to quarterly hearings on jail conditions that included testimony from court-appointed experts.
Gomez wrote in a 2020 enforcement order that the “totality of evidence has consistently demonstrated” that the territory remained out of compliance with the consent decree and that in “the wake of multiple decades of a glacial pace towards compliance, many have continued to suffer injury.” Gomez cited evidence of prison cell arson, attacks on inmates — both by other inmates and by corrections officers — rape, suicide, officers sleeping on shift, falsified log records and other failings.
Conditions have little improved, according to plaintiffs who asked Chief Judge Robert Molloy last year to issue a second enforcement order and sanctions against the territory. They noted that in 2024 — when “a full complement of Court Experts assessed Defendants’ compliance for the first time” since the consent decree was amended in 2013 — monitors found the jail to be compliant with just two percent of the provisions outlined in the settlement agreement.
“The time for Defendants to be held to account for their repeated and flagrant failures to comply with either the Consent Decree or this Court’s prior orders has come,” they argued. In a status report filed last week, they said violations of the consent decree persist.
One inmate who was booked in August 2025 was unable to go to the recreation area for six months because the route did not accommodate a wheelchair, they claimed. He was later transferred to St. Croix.
The report also highlighted a Feb. 11 assault, which was discovered “only after a maintenance worker who happened to be in the area heard it and called for help.” The plaintiffs claim that the victim was left in the same cluster as the detainee who assaulted him for an hour and a half afterward, allowing the assailant to enter the victim’s cell and spit in his face.
Other claims include examples of incarcerated people being confined in cells for more than 12 hours a day, lack of air conditioning, insufficient recreation, poor record-keeping, lack of a sprinkler system and inadequate staffing.
Molloy denied the request for an enforcement order in March, but only because monitoring was suspended amid a payment dispute between the plaintiffs and the government. In the same order, Molloy wrote that the consent decree is clear and unambiguous: the defendants are solely responsible for paying monitors’ fees up to $100,000. Any amount beyond that is apportioned by the court. Molloy said he looked at a number of factors in deciding how to break down the costs, including the parties’ ability to pay.
“As Plaintiffs are pretrial detainees and inmates, their ability to pay is limited,” he wrote, while the defendants operate a budget of more than one billion dollars on an annual basis and have “a much greater ability to pay, as amply demonstrated by their retention of numerous outside counsel.”
He ultimately ordered that the territory would bear 95% of any costs in excess of $100,000.
The notice of appeal, submitted last week by V.I. Attorney General Gordon Rhea and signed by attorney William Lunsford of the law firm Butler Snow and V.I. Assistant Attorney General Sheena Conway, indicated that the government intends to challenge Molloy’s recent order as well as “all underlying orders and opinions,” including Gomez’s 2020 enforcement order.
