CHARLESTON, SOUTH CAROLINA – George Junior Hall, 50, an inmate in the federal Bureau of Prisons, has been sentenced to 120 months in federal prison after a federal jury found him guilty in November 2021 of assault with a dangerous weapon with intent to cause injury and assault resulting in serious injuries.
At the time of the offense, Hall was an inmate finishing a sentence at the Federal Correctional Institution in Estill, South Carolina. Evidence presented to the jury, including graphic video footage, showed Hall attacking another inmate from behind with a prison weapon known as a “lock-in-a-sock,” a nylon belt attached to a metal combination lock slipped inside of a sock. Hall struck the victim in the back of the head and knocked him to the ground, then stood over him beating him repeatedly with the weapon until he fled. Prison officials found the victim bleeding in his cell after following a trail of blood from the scene of the attack. The victim survived but was hospitalized with numerous lacerations, a fractured skull, and a subarachnoid hemorrhage, and he suffered temporary hearing loss and permanent scarring.
Hall has a long history of violence, including a 1993 Florida conviction for aggravated battery arising from an incident where he shot his own brother. At the time of the prison assault, Hall was serving a twenty-year sentence on federal convictions for attempted murder and assault on a United States Postal carrier arising from a 1996 incident where he shot a mail carrier while attempting to steal welfare checks. Disciplinary records presented to the Court showed that Hall continued this pattern of violence while incarcerated, assaulting a cellmate with hot grits, striking a prison guard with a lock-in-a-sock, and trying to smother another inmate with a mattress, beating him, and biting off a part of his ear.
United States District Judge Richard M. Gergel granted the Government’s motion for an “upward departure,” increasing the sentencing guidelines to account for Hall’s history of violence while incarcerated. The Court observed that “[t]he record firmly establishes a persistent pattern of extreme violence over the entirety of [Hall’s] adult life.”
The case was investigated by the FBI with assistance from the United States Bureau of Prisons. Former Acting United States Attorney Rhett DeHart and Assistant United States Attorney Chris Schoen tried the case on behalf of the United States.
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