Who Killed Marshall Ray Price? Family's Desperate Search for Truth

Eight hours after Marshall Ray Price died, the first inmate from the Greene County Detention Center to call his family was Odell Lewis, the man whose boxing match with Price inside the northeast Arkansas jail was officially blamed for causing the injuries leading to Price's death.

At that point, about 10 a.m. on December 8, 2022, Lewis did not know Price had died at 2:08 a.m. Lewis believed Price was severely hurt and quickly needed medical attention. In his call, he urged the family to do something—anything—to help Price.

"(Lewis) said he didn't know what happened, but that the guards didn't treat my dad right," Price's daughter, Julian Price, told Newsweek. "We needed to check on him ASAP," she said Lewis told her. "'I informed Odell that my dad had already passed."

Lewis' call alerted Price's family to questions over why the jail did not do more 15 hours earlier when Price first started asking for medical attention; he had been in dire condition, curled up in pain on a mat in his jail cell. Newsweek's review of police and prosecutor documents show a call for help was placed by a fellow inmate from Price's cell at 10:53 a.m. December 7.

"The guards ignored calls for help, and he sat dying in his cell banging for help," his daughter said, citing what she had been told by other inmates.

Those detained with Price were quick to call or message the family. Their pleas were clear: Price had been beaten inside the jail and had received negligent care by jail medical staff before he was taken to Arkansas Methodist Medical Center.

Several inmates told Newsweek and the family that they believe they overheard Price being beaten by jailers and think that this could have contributed to his death. The official investigation concluded there was no basis for criminal charges against anyone at the jail.

The family claims the county's version of events doesn't make sense, given the severity of Price's internal injuries.

Newsweek heard about Price's death—and the questions still surrounding it—during an investigation of the justice system in Arkansas following the death by starvation and acute dehydration of another inmate across the state in Sebastian County. Reporters were told by critics of the justice system that it was skewed against the poorest and most vulnerable in Arkansas. They learned of long sentences even for minor crimes, overcrowded and severely understaffed jail and prison conditions, in-custody deaths or injuries, and a state that prides itself on being tough on crime at the expense, its detractors say, of those trapped in a justice system that prioritizes punishment over rehabilitation. Price's case exemplified many of those problems, starting even before his arrest in possession of kratom, an herb he used to counter his former heroin addiction.

"Arkansas must do more to address the problems that are leading to severe deterioration or loss of life in our incarceration state," said Belle Starr of the Arkansas Justice Project, which tracks alleged abuses in the state's criminal justice system. "If we are to assign punishment to a person for violating the law, we have a responsibility to make sure it's a rehabilitative system and there are protections from loss of life through physical, emotional and medical dangers."

"Some of the people incarcerated are the kids we didn't save," she said. "Our incarceration rates reflect a failure in our society."

Newsweek sent a detailed list of questions to the office of Republican Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders, which did not address them specifically.

"Governor Sanders made it a priority during her first legislative session to address the issue of criminal justice and victim advocacy in Arkansas," said spokeswoman Alexa Henning.

Arkansas has the fifth-highest rate for inmates in the country—942 per 100,000 population—in a nation that has the highest incarceration rate in the world.

The Investigation

The Arkansas State Police took on the investigation into Price's death within hours, which is normal for in-custody deaths. The investigators, who kept an office inside the county jail, read Lewis his Miranda rights, and he was put in handcuffs during two rounds of questioning that lasted a total of 20 minutes. But he was never charged.

Although Greene County Prosecuting Attorney Sophia Hagood wrote in March there was "insufficient evidence to support criminal charges against any person at the jail," investigators blamed the boxing between Price and Lewis—even though the match lasted moments, involved three punches at most and happened three days before Price died, according to the state police report and Newsweek interviews with inmates.

The autopsy report, reviewed by Newsweek, showed Price died of hypovolemic shock due to hemoperitoneum—a rare, spontaneous and fatal condition from trauma in which the body doesn't have enough blood for the heart to pump because of internal bleeding—from recent blunt force injuries of the torso. But it lists the manner of death as "undetermined," meaning no classification such as accident, natural or homicide is given.

The family is still fighting to get a full record, including autopsy photos and investigator reports.

And answers to who dealt the fatal blows to Price.

For private investigator Jon Griggs, there is no doubt that someone—Lewis, guards, other inmates—beat Price to death.

"The only real evidence is that Odell Lewis says he didn't do this...All the internal injuries that (Price) had were in no way consistent with that boxing match at all," said Griggs, a longtime law enforcement official looking into the case without pay after seeing news reports on Price's death. "There's so many inconsistencies," he said, referring to the accounts from the sheriff's department, the county prosecutor, and inmates and family about what happened.

"It doesn't make sense...I don't know why you would cover up an inmate beating another inmate to this extent," he said.

Inmates who either saw the boxing match or witnessed the care Price received from jail and medical staff as he was dying told Newsweek he was moaning and crying for help for hours after an initial visit by corrections officers around 10 a.m. Wednesday, December 7. Price was later taken to see nurses, who offered him Kool-Aid—to treat his low blood pressure and dehydration—before finally getting him treatment in the late afternoon or early evening hours.

Anthony Epley, among those interviewed by the state police, had a second-floor cell directly above Price's. It was Epley who pressed the emergency call button after 10 a.m. that alerted jail staff to Price's deteriorating condition.

"Everybody in the pod heard (an officer) say, 'No, we're not taking him to the hospital' because he thought he was faking, trying to get out," Epley told Newsweek. "A lot of people do that...But this man was not faking, and they took it as a joke...I went down there to his cell, and he, you know, he looked ill, he looked very bad. He looked—I hate to say it—he looked like he was knocking on death's door."

After speaking with paramedics who took Price to the hospital, Price's mother said: "He wasn't really alive, you know, not really. They checked his eyes and said his pupils were fully dilated and he was non-responsive to light. And I said, 'Your eyes are the windows to your soul.' I said, 'His windows opened up, his soul left,'...Marshall wasn't there."

The FBI took two statements from Price's family and at least one from Griggs. But it remains unclear whether the bureau is conducting a full investigation.

"Marshall's case should be investigated by an outside agency," said Griggs. "That agency should be from the Justice Department and not the Arkansas State Police, as they have a substation at the Greene County Sheriff's Department and would have an everyday working relationship with sheriff's department personnel."

The presence of the jailers during the interviews with inmates was particularly problematic, and compromised the independence of the state police investigation, said Roy Taylor, an independent investigative expert who reviewed the case for Newsweek.

"If I was conducting the interviews, I would not have had anybody from the facility there because if that person needs to criticize the facility or its operation, then they may be less inclined to do so and feel intimidated by somebody that has control over their care and custody every day for maybe years to come," he said.

His concerns were echoed by Miriam Krinsky, a former assistant U.S. attorney and the executive director of Fair and Just Prosecution—a national network of elected prosecutors focused on criminal justice reform.

"There is not simply the concern about witnesses not feeling that they can be completely truthful, but the investigation also lacks integrity," said Krinsky, who was not involved in the case.

State police investigating another law enforcement entity is often a conflict of interest since the two frequently work closely together to bring cases, said Taylor, a former chief of police in departments across North Carolina and Ohio and now the head of Taylor Consulting Group, a North Carolina-based consulting firm that studies and provides expertise on law enforcement investigations and procedures.

"Even if it was an involuntary action, it still led to somebody's death," he said. "When something happens that's not a natural death, it's a homicide investigation."

Hagood told Newsweek that her office's investigation was independent and reviewed separately by several of her attorneys.

Not filing any charges is "where we ended up," Hagood said, adding she didn't feel a case on any charge under Arkansas law could be proven beyond a reasonable doubt. "We all looked at it, we reviewed what the state police gave us. And at the end of the day, that was our conclusion."

Newsweek sent a detailed list of questions to Arkansas State Police. Spokeswoman Cindy Murphy responded: "We stand by our investigation, our investigators and our findings."

Members of Price's family dispute that, saying the system failed.

"During and after my father's death, there has been no compassion or integrity," Julian Price, said. "As it stands, justice remains unserved, accountability is lost, and no lessons have been learned."

Sheena Palmer, Price's sister, put it this way: "I feel like he was treated like he was subpar, and beneath them. Like his little life didn't matter."

In the days after Price's death, family members protested and held vigils at the Greene County Sheriff's Department and jail. Some held pictures of Price and signs that called for the state to legalize kratom—the herb for which he had been sentenced to 10 years for trafficking and which is legal across nearly all of the United States.

The System

Price's death put a spotlight on the justice system in Arkansas, a state with a tough-on-crime reputation that is only set to get tougher after Governor Sanders signed into law the Protect Arkansas Act, whose detractors say it will exacerbate overcrowding and other problems in jails as the most serious offenders have to serve their full sentences and most felons in the state will serve 85 percent of theirs.

Defending the law, Rep. Jimmy Gazaway, a Republican from Paragould who sponsored the bill in the state House of Representatives, said it was needed because people had been serving only parts of their sentences.

"Some of these offenders were people who had been convicted of serious violent criminal offenses," he told Newsweek. Even people found guilty of the lowest-level, non-violent offenses will see an increase in their minimum time served from 16 percent to 25 percent, Gazaway said.

The Democratic minority largely opposed the bill, though they saw some positives in that it gives those who a released an extra 120 days before they have to pay fees for their parole.

"It is so harsh when it comes to increasing prison time," said Rep. Nicole Clowney, a Fayetteville Democrat in the state legislature. "We can never build enough prison beds to stop crime in our state...What has to happen is starting to address some of the underlying causes of crime."

Republican state legislators said the new law was needed because of the high rate of violent crime in Arkansas—the highest out of 43 states with measurable data, according to FBI data for 2021. The state had 709 violent crimes per 100,000 residents that year, followed by Tennessee (675), Louisiana (661), and Alabama (596). A generally low violent-crime state, like Maine, has a rate of 100.

The likelihood of increased sentences worries prison reformers.

"If you have a system where no matter what you do, you can't reduce your sentence by trying to improve yourself while incarcerated by behaving properly, by not getting in fights, not dealing drugs, etc...then that totally has a perverse effect of making the prisons more violent and less rehabilitative," said Corene Kendrick, a deputy director at the ACLU National Prison Project.

Even some conservative voices have concerns about Arkansas going too far.

"People convicted of nonviolent offenses could maybe be at some (alternative) placement," said Kaitlin Owens, deputy director for advocacy at the Nolan Center for Justice at the American Conservative Union Foundation. "You put a nonviolent person with a violent person, and who's going to come out looking more like the other, right?"

Despite its get-tough approach, Arkansas has a recidivism rate higher than the national average.

Some 50.6 percent of people released from Arkansas jails and state prisons in 2017 had been re-incarcerated by 2020, the most recent data available from the Arkansas Department of Corrections.  Arkansas' 3-year recidivism rate in 2023 stands at 47.5 percent, according to the World Population Review, an independent organization based in California that analyzes demographic information. The 2023 recidivism rate for Arkansas put it above only Connecticut (49 percent), New Mexico (49.1 percent), Delaware (60.2 percent) and Alaska (61.6 percent).

"We know that prison is the least effective way of creating people who are safe, sane, and good neighbors," said retired Pulaski County Judge Wendell Griffen, who left the bench in December 2022 and was not a part of Price's case. "That it behooves us not to be sending most of the people that come into our criminal punishment system to the least effective option."

Price's family said that if he had been treated as someone with a mental illness—addiction—rather than someone with a moral failing, he could have gotten the help he needed instead of being sent to the jail.

Who Was Marshall Ray Price?

A jack-of-all-trades and the youngest of four kids from the east side of Paragould, Marshall Price pushed through poverty to become a solid student and athlete—football, golf and baseball—before drugs took hold after a shoulder injury playing football. It was an opioid for his pain that first got him.

"That's where the interest in drugs really started," said Julian Price, 26, adding she was "always a daddy's girl." The addiction didn't hit hard at first, and he went on to study at Arkansas State University before leaving ahead of graduation.

Handsome and charismatic, Price attracted friends and partners. But that early addiction clung to him; by 25, his daughter said, "my stepmother found the first syringe."

Price had taken to heroin.

His body breaking down, along with his mind, Price "had scabs, and he couldn't sit still and couldn't sleep," his daughter said. "He looked like death."

"He wouldn't go into his mom's house," Julian Price recalled. "He would sit out in the car and freeze." But eventually, he reconnected with his mom, and not long after, he dialed a help line, where he learned of a rehab facility in Michigan.

Julian Price said her father spent nearly a year in treatment, then stayed in Michigan four more years to work before slipping back into addiction. By then, Price, separated from his wife, headed home to Paragould. He moved in with Palmer, his sister.

Desperate, Palmer, 50, asked how he stayed clean in Michigan. That's when she learned of the kratom that Price said was used by addicts in Michigan to stay clean. Immediately, Palmer headed to buy the herbal extract.

"He started to heal," Julian Price said. "His scabs went away. He was able to rest and get a job." Price stayed clean for four years before his arrest.

"He was a joy to be around," Julian Price said. "I just remember him being protective and smart and loving."

Gaps in the video

Surveillance video footage might have helped to provide answers as to what happened in the last day of Price's life, but there are multiple gaps at key moments despite the entire jail outside of individual cells having surveillance. The gaps include the moments immediately before Price's medical emergency, as well as during and after separate calls for medical attention made by other inmates on his behalf.

Greene County Sheriff Brad Snyder, who took office the month after Price's death, said the gaps were because the jail previously using motion-sensor cameras, although many clips cut out even while movement is happening in the frame.

In addition to the jail surveillance, correction officers wore body cams. But Snyder told Newsweek that officers on different shifts would share them and there had been issues with batteries dying prematurely when a critical incident may be occurring.

One correction officer's body-cam footage did show another jailer lifting and dropping Price's arms and a nurse berating and ordering him to quit faking his condition even as Price was laboring to breathe, writhing and moaning, apparently unable to speak. In the last video of him alive, the footage abruptly cut off after a little over five minutes.

"When they stood him up, you can watch his color change," said Palmer, a restorative nurse assistant and certified nurse assistant of 23 years. "The minute they stood him up, they signed his death certificate... Marshall was gone right then."

"One possible scenario is that he sustained injuries in the spleen from the punch to his left ribcage, but the bleeding is inside of the spleen," Robin said. "Then, at some later point in time, when the spleen gets larger and it then opens up the laceration, and that's what led to the acute event of bleeding into his peritoneal cavity."

While he was never charged, Lewis called himself "the fall guy" and a "scapegoat" in a written message to Newsweek from Randall L. Williams prison in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, from where he transferred in September to supervised custody in the state's re-entry program. He had been sentenced to eight years on a residential burglary and weapons charge from December 2020, with 10 years suspended.

"Yes, they tried to blame me. (But) Marshall was fine after we boxed," wrote Lewis.

Witness David Walker, another inmate, said there had appeared to be nothing wrong with Price after the boxing match.

"Marshall walked away from that boxing match in good spirits...If there was something wrong with him, he didn't say anything about it. I played chess with him every other day," he said.

Snyder, the sheriff, said the administration was not aware of the fights until the state police investigation revealed Lewis and Price had sparred briefly in a cell. But a former jailer at the Greene County Detention Center told Newsweek that fights between inmates were common at the facility.

Discipline for such fights, which are forbidden, is rare, the former jailer told Newsweek.

The officer also noted that the night shift is often made up of young, inexperienced corrections officers who didn't pay much attention to the 24-hour surveillance and did not do hourly checks, as required.

In a written response to Newsweek questions, Snyder said once authorities learned of the fights, the jail, administration was told to watch for them. "We have not seen or heard of any instances like this since we learned of the fight claims around mid to late January," he said.

If prosecutors blamed Lewis's short bout with Price for the death, Taylor, the independent investigator, said that also could have given rise to charges. "If this would have been you and your brother horsing around in your back yard and you punched your brother and cracked his ribs and, a couple of days later, he dies," he said, "what do you think they would do to you? It should have gone to a grand jury."

In addition to questions over the role of jail staff, there are questions over the role of medical staff, Taylor said. He said the Greene County Prosecutor's Office should have considered other charges, even if short of homicide, particularly against medical staff because of the delays in care, even after nursing staff found clear symptoms of serious health risks.

Julian Price said the family found an attorney this month to take up her father's case. She said they've had little luck getting questions answered by the Greene County Sheriff's Department and Hagood's office.

"Every incarcerated individual is deserving of remembrance and consideration," she said. "My father was a good man, capable of great love. We will never forget who we have lost."

Valerie Bauman can be reached at v.bauman@newsweek.com. Find her on Twitter@valeriereports

Eric Ferkenhoff can be reached at e.ferkenhoff@newsweek.com. Find him on Twitter @EricFerk