By Daphne Duret
The Palm Beach Post
PALM BEACH, Fla. — A jury convicted a Palm Beach County Sheriff’s jail deputy Friday of official misconduct and evidence tampering charges in a case surrounding a 2010 fight at the jail where an inmate was stabbed in the neck with a pencil.
Although jurors acquitted Derrick Antonio Daniels of the most serious aggravated battery charge, his convictions still mean he faces as much as 26 years in prison when Circuit Judge Karen Miller sentences him later this year.
After the verdict, Miller ordered Daniels taken immediately into custody.
Prosecutors say Daniels allowed murder suspect Taurus Turnquest into the cell of Lajuane Dunnaway in December 2010. Dunnaway said Turnquest stabbed him in the neck with a pencil during the attack but Daniels refused to get him any medical help outside of tossing him some alcohol and gauze.
Nurses later treated Dunnaway for cuts to his neck as well as bruises to his chest and back. Prosecutors Marci Rex and Bryan Poulton during Daniels’ trial this week played for jurors a phone recording in which an inmate tells someone that deputies were about to let two inmates “bump” — which prosecutors say is a slang for fight.