Times-Union: Chautauqua County Man Suing State DOCCS, Seeking Protective Custody

Daniel Hyers

The Albany Times Union reports as Chautauqua County man serving time for manslaughter is suing the state corrections department, seeking to be placed in permanent protective custody.

35-year old Daniel Hyers is serving 25 years after being convicted of manslaughter in 2010 for killing his stepfather.

The Times Union reports he has has been beaten, stabbed and slashed at multiple prisons after he testified several years ago in a criminal case targeting members of the Bloods gang who are incarcerated in state prisons.

In March, when Hyers learned he was being transferred from Wende Correctional Facility in Erie County to another prison, his attorney wrote a letter to the Department of Corrections and Community Supervision outlining the gang’s years of threats against Hyers and requesting that he be placed in protective custody at the next prison.

Corrections Department Deputy Commissioner Anne Marie McGrath responded to that letter in June saying Hyers had been moved to Eastern Correctional Facility in Ulster County and that they had the ability to keep him safe — although that prison does not have a dedicated protective custody unit.

McGrath wrote in the letter, “Eastern NY Correctional Facility is capable of meeting their safety and security needs. Daniel Hyers custodial history indicates he has not adjusted well to long term protective custody settings.”

Roughly three weeks later, on July 13, two inmates with ties to the Bloods gang pushed him down a flight of stairs, slashed his face and punched and kicked him, causing a fractured rib. It was the second time Hyers has been stabbed in prison in an attack tied to the Bloods’ bounty.

Days later, after Hyers had been treated at Albany Medical Center Hospital, corrections officials transferred him to Coxsackie Correctional Facility in Greene County, where has remained in a medical unit with officers protecting him, according to his lawsuit. But during the transfer, it alleges, he was assaulted again by two inmates.

The case was filed as assaults on prison staff and inmates have been steadily increasing for years, despite declining prison populations over the course of the last two decades — a number that has increased during the past year.

In 2019, there were 1,267 documented assaults of inmates. Last year, the department recorded 2,107 assaults. There were 1,043 assaults on staff members in 2019, and that number rose to 1,671 last year.

Hyers’ lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in Albany, seeks punitive damages and a court order placing him in protective custody while prohibiting the corrections department from transporting or housing Hyers with any inmates on his “no-contact” list or who are known members of the Bloods gang.

During his first year in state prison, Hyers was charged with promoting prison contraband and criminal possession of a weapon, both felonies, after being found with a weapon at Clinton Correctional Facility in Clinton County. He pleaded guilty and was sentenced to up to three years in prison — a term that was to run concurrently with his 25-year sentence for the manslaughter conviction.