MAHONING COUNTY Convicted deputies request placement in West Virginia

Sentencing dates have yet to be set for three defendants.
By PATRICIA MEADE
VINDICATOR CRIME REPORTER
YOUNGSTOWN -- Three former Mahoning County deputy sheriffs convicted of beating a jail inmate are adjusting to life in federal prison.
Raymond Hull, Ryan C. Strange and John Rivera were sentenced May 5 in Cleveland federal court. They requested placement at the Federal Correctional Institution in Morgantown, West Va., a low-security facility.
U.S. District Judge Lesley Brooks Wells told them she would recommend Morgantown to the Bureau of Prisons but noted that the BOP has the final say.
New York prison
Hull, 36, of Poland, is at the Brooklyn Metropolitan Detention Center, an administrative facility in New York. It wasn't immediately clear if Brooklyn is Hull's final destination, Michael Truman, BOP spokesman in Washington, D.C., said Monday.
Truman said the Brooklyn MDC is a holding center but Hull may be assigned to a work detail there. Hull, who reported to the New York prison June 10, is serving a 15-month sentence.
Strange, 29, of Vienna, and Rivera, 33, of Youngstown, are at the Montgomery Federal Prison Camp, a minimum-security facility in Alabama. The camp is on Maxwell Air Force Base.
Both reported to the prison Friday. Strange was sentenced to 21 months; Rivera, 18 months.
Mundane jobs
Truman said Strange and Rivera will work on the base for the military, picking up trash, for example. He said they'll do whatever needs to be done to free up military personnel from mundane jobs.
The former deputies admitted they beat inmate Tawhon Easterly in December 2001 as punishment for Easterly punching a female guard who broke up a fight between inmates.
The inmate abuse case includes former deputies Mark Dixon and Ronald Kaschak and retired supervisors Bill Deluca and Ronald Denson, all of whom pleaded guilty. Sentencing dates have not been set yet for Deluca, Denson and Kaschak.
Prison records show Dixon "in transit." When sentenced May 17, Dixon requested placement at the federal prison in Elkton.
Dixon, 31, of Youngstown, has an unrelated sexual battery case pending in Mahoning County Common Pleas Court.
meade@vindy.com