By Jason Renard Walker 

According to witnesses that lived near Matthew Percival in Powledge unit’s restricted housing cellblock: On January 26 2025 Percival told every guard that passed his cell he was feeling suicidal. Two African staff in particular told Percival to submit a sick call (hand written request for medical care) then walked away. 

A guard who never works in restricted housing said he discovered Percival hanging from a rung connected to the top bunk, around 7:23pm during a rare security check that isn’t normally done by the regulars. Despite restricted housing being a solitary confinement environment, for reasons unknown the cell Percival was in had a top and bottom bunk, giving him a place to hang himself from. 

Though guards working in restricted housing are required to do security checks every 30 minutes and conduct periodic head counts, they rarely do so. Falsifying records to reflect that this is being done is very common and encouraged by their supervisors, that routinely do the same to corner cut work assignments. 

At best, most staff walk by each cell without observing if any prisoners are alive and often decline to investigate hours worth of screams, door kicking and mentally unstable prisoners that flood the entire cell block with foul smelling waste water. 

Prisoners that are sent to restricted housing for supposed rule violations are often held without their personal property, securus tablet, and correspondence material until the disposition of their disciplinary case which can take over a month, in violation of TDCJ pre hearing detention (PHD) rules. They aren’t allowed to use the cellblock phone to complain about these violations, or get a haircut until they are sent back to population, which breeds the kicking, screaming and toilet flooding in most. 

As a reactionary response to shift liability away from staff and TDCJ as an entity, security checks and head counts are temporarily being conducted properly until administrative bodies from the main office in Huntsville investigate, as they always do following an in custody death. All of us in restricted housing were required to submit a urine analysis, but not staff, who are the only ones capable of bringing in drugs.

Percival was an older, wheel chair bound amputee, previously housed in the general population area. He was temporarily assigned to restricted housing for possessing something with the ‘mystery dope’ sprayed on it. 

Percival’s death was not the consequence of structural deficiencies, perfect timing or anything unrelated to deliberately indifferent staff. It is the product of a prison system that has a tendency for attracting some of the most incompetent, callous, mendacious, lazy, barbaric and sadomasochistic individuals society has to offer. 

If you ever want to see what the scum of America look like, take a look at a Texas prison parking lot during shift change. 

Jason Renard Walker 1532092 

Powledge Unit 

P.O. Box 660400 

Dallas, TX 75266-0400