A Vermont man died Wednesday at a private prison in Mississippi. He’s the second Vermonter to die at the facility this year.
Shawn Sears, 56, of Whiting, was found unresponsive in his cell at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility on Wednesday morning. Sears was pronounced dead after medical staff started an “emergency medical response,” the Vermont Department of Corrections said in a press release.
Sears was serving sentences on multiple convictions, including aggravated domestic assault and obstruction of justice. His history with the department dates back to 1989, and includes multiple stints of incarceration, furlough, probation and parole, Haley Sommer, the department’s communications director said in an email.
Sears’ most recent stint in prison began in 2019, and he was serving an aggregate sentence of two to 58 years, Sommer said.
The Department of Corrections will review his death, as will the Defender General’s Prisoners’ Rights Office.
Vermont incarcerates nearly 150 men at the Mississippi facility, which is run by CoreCivic — the largest private prison company in the country. The state, which has held people at Tallahatchie County Correctional Facility since 2018, renewed its contract with CoreCivic in 2023.
Sears is the second Vermont man held at the prison to die this year. Titus Peters, 42, was found dead in his cell on January 29, the department said at the time.
Peters’ cause of death has not been released, but internal department emails obtained by Vermont Public show that he was being held in segregation at the time of his death.
Peters had been placed in segregation more than two weeks before his death after he assaulted someone in the prison, records show. Peters was due to be out of segregation the day before he was found dead, but that move was delayed because the prison was on lockdown to clear snow and ice “within the facility,” according to the emails. Mississippi was hit by a severe winter storm around that time in January.
Corrections staff last checked on Peters about 40 minutes before he was found in his cell, the records say.
The Vermont Department of Corrections still hasn’t received the final autopsy results from Mississippi and as a result, the investigation into Peters’ death has not concluded, Sommer said in an email.
Defender General Matt Valerio, whose office is also investigating the incident, didn’t respond to a request for comment.
Peters was serving a 30 years to life sentence after being convicted of several crimes, including aggravated sexual assault of a child and lewd and lascivious behavior with a child.
Vermont started sending people to out-of-state prisons in the late 1990s due to a lack of space at in-state correctional facilities. Since then the overall prison population has declined, but there still aren’t enough beds to house the incarcerated population in Vermont. The number of people held in Mississippi has ticked up in recent months as the overall prison population has risen after it fell to record lows during the COVID-19 pandemic.
