By Kevin Shea
nj.com
BRIDGETON, N.J. — An inmate serving time for manslaughter has won an appeal over his missing TV, which disappeared during a transfer between New Jersey prisons.
Sadot Council, 40, bought a television in May 2023 from the commissary at South Woods State Prison in Bridgeton. Two months later, the state Department of Corrections transferred him to Bayside State Prison in Maurice River Township.
Once at Bayside, Council realized his TV was missing, along with some other less-expensive items. He filed a lost property claim with South Woods for the TV and tacked on the sales receipt for the purchase.
South Woods sent the claim to Bayside, where an investigator denied it for several reasons. The investigator wrote that South Woods officials were unable to find the TV and it concluded no negligence by prison officials.
Council refiled the claim with South Woods officials, and another officer denied it.
This official again found no negligence by prison officials, noting that inmates retain property at their own risk and the burden of proof falls on them, not the prison.
The investigator wrote, “The inmate has also failed to provide documentation of ownership/possession of the property that is listed on the claim.”
Council appealed, which was heard by the state Superior Court’s Appellate Division, which, in a few pages, found prison officials ignored their own regulations to investigate claims, “properly or completely.”
The Department of Corrections, represented by an assistant attorney general in the matter, provided no statements from Council, prison staffers or other relevant witnesses as required by state code.
The corrections department’s decisions were “comprised exclusively of conclusory statements” and were based on an “incorrect premise” that Council had no proof of the TV’s ownership.
He did, the appeals judges said.
The decision sends the matter back to the prison system, the Department of Corrections, “because the DOC failed to conduct the meaningful investigation required by its own regulations.”
The DOC now must conduct that required investigation, the decision says.
Council represented himself in the matter.
This is his second appeal win. He was convicted in 2017 of murder for shooting a man he knew for many years in the Stephen Crane housing complex in Newark in 2015. A judge sentenced him to life behind bars.
In July 2019, an appeals court overturned the case due to several trial errors cited by the state’s Public Defender’s Office. Council chose to go to trial again and a jury convicted him in December 2022 of the lesser aggravated manslaughter.
Council is currently serving a 12-year term and is eligible for release in May 2026. He is currently at Northern State Prison in Newark.
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