What The Hell America!

After spending more than two years in two different prisons in two different states, Brittany Martin believed her fight with the criminal legal system was finally over. She walked out of a South Carolina prison just before Thanksgiving, reunited with her family, and began to rebuild her life. But just three weeks later, the 37-year-old mother was arrested again.

The mother of five was in prison for 925 days after a verbal altercation with Sumter police during a 2020 Black Lives Matter protest and sentenced to four years. Her early release came just before Thanksgiving on Nov 27.

But while on parole to complete her felony conviction, Martin was rearrested on two warrants tied to an 2023 incident that took place while she was incarcerated. It happened during her time at a state prison in South Carolina, when guards cut off her locs.

Her new arrest could jeopardize the conditions of her early release, potentially sending her back to prison, her attorney said.

“If there was a warrant out for my arrest, then why did they let me out from the same prison the day before Thanksgiving?” Martin said in an interview this month. 

“Make it make sense,” she added, referring to the new charges filed by the South Carolina Department of Corrections’ Office of the Inspector General.

Martin had been incarcerated since May 2022 before her release. What she didn’t know was that charges had been filed against her on Nov. 28, the day after she was released from state custody, according to Chrysti Shain, director of communications for the state Department of Corrections. 

Prosecutors charged Martin with two counts of threatening the life of a person or family of a public official or public employee, according to arrest warrants. The warrants show that a judge signed off on the charges on June 26, 2024, while Martin was still incarcerated. 

Martin’s attorney is calling for the new charges to be dropped. Her attorney is also working with the ACLU of South Carolina to ensure that Martin’s 2022 conviction gets overturned. 

As Martin awaits her next court appearance this summer, her legal team also plans to file a federal civil rights lawsuit against the state’s Department of Corrections, which has surveillance video footage of the incident that has not been viewed by Martin and her attorney.

On Jan. 25, 2023, authorities said, Martin had an altercation with a woman prison guard after her locs were cut off without her consent. But Martin and her attorney maintain — and her prison disciplinary records show — that she was already disciplined for the incident while still incarcerated. Six additional infractions were later added to her disciplinary record in South Carolina. 

Her records from Camille Graham Correctional Institution in Columbia were not updated after September 2023. That fall is when Martin was transferred from Lexington County, South Carolina, to a prison nearly 900 miles away in Lincoln, Illinois. Her family says they were never notified about the transfer.

While incarcerated, Martin appealed her 2022 conviction to the South Carolina Supreme Court. But just weeks after she was granted parole and released, the court denied her petition to have the case reviewed, said her appellate attorney, Meredith McPhail of the ACLU of South Carolina.

New charges emerge after early release

When Martin was rearrested on Dec. 20, she said she couldn’t believe the new charges. 

“It’s on video,” Martin said, acknowledging what happened but still questioning why she was being charged with an offense for which she believed she had already served time, including solitary confinement.

When she was taken into custody for the second time, Martin immediately called her attorney, Sybil D. Rosado. Three days later, a $1,087.50 surety bond was posted, according to court records. The bond allows her to remain out of jail while the new case moves forward.

“Since her release, police and the state continue to harass and torment her,” wrote Melina Abdullah, co-founder of Black Lives Matter Grassroots, in an online petition on April 4. The petition calls for Byron Gipson, solicitor of the Fifth Judicial Circuit, to drop the “false charges” against Martin. 

“For the sake of freedom and justice, it is time to drop all charges against Brittany Martin, allow her to raise her children and live her life,” Abdullah wrote.

Martin said she is due back in court on June 26 — the same month her parole was set to end. Parole would have given her the freedom to leave Sumter, or even the state, she said.

Capital B has reached out to Martin’s parole officer, who did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

If convicted on the new charges, Martin faces a fine of up to $500, up to 30 days in jail, or both. But that’s exactly the issue, said her attorney: Rosado believes that Martin has already been punished by corrections officials for the January 2023 incident. 

According to disciplinary records, Martin was cited under a disciplinary policy that’s determined by prison authorities for “striking an employee with/without a weapon.” As a result, Martin lost 20 days of good time credit, had her canteen privileges — including access to hygiene products — revoked for 91 days, and spent 31 days in detention.

“This is ridiculous, harassment,” Rosado said of her initial reaction to the new charges. “The bottom line is this is harassment.”

Rosado said she has been waiting for the prosecutors to respond to her Feb. 28 motion for discovery, where parties share evidence related to the case. But prosecutors have not filed anything, she said. 

“I want to see the video. I want to see them beat her, and I’d like to have that scene in open court,” Rosado said.

Capital B reached out to the solicitor’s office that filed the charges against Martin. A court public information officer said in an email that “Brittany Martin’s charges are still pending, and our office cannot comment on ongoing cases.” 

An interaction with a prison guard caught on video

Martin said she spent most of her incarceration in both prisons in solitary confinement — a practice widely condemned by advocates as inhumane. In that isolation, Martin said she found the space to grieve the loss of her 18-year-old son Courtney Harris, who was murdered by a former friend. Her son’s hair had been wrapped in with her locs, which were cut off during the 2023 incident. 

She said she also reflected on being separated from her newborn daughter Blessing — who was born while Martin was behind bars — as well as her four other children and husband. She said she began processing the pain she had never had time to confront and remained steadfast in her belief that her incarceration was unjust — a position she maintains.

When Martin refused to let prison staff cut her hair, she was clinging to more than just a hairstyle: As a Black Hebrew Israelite, she said her locs have deep religious and cultural significance since her son’s hair had been wrapped in with hers. She said that prison officials told her that her hairstyle violated policy. She said she was also standing up for the same rights enjoyed by women prison guards with locs.

But Martin said she was “chained down” by prison guards. While she was being restrained, she said the guards demanded several times for her to let her locs go. 

“They used sharp-ass scissors that could have stabbed me anytime,” she said of the 2023 incident. 

Martin made verbal threats and spit in the face of a woman guard, according to the arrest warrant describing the interaction in 2023. She was placed in a wheelchair, and she said the guard got too close to her face and taunted her after her locs were forcibly cut off.

According to the arrest warrant, Martin said, “I’m going to order a hit, you gone” and “your (sic) dead, it wasn’t even worth your life.” The names of the prison employees are redacted from the warrants, which were provided to Capital B by the South Carolina Department of Corrections.

Martin admitted to spitting in the guard’s face and making threats during the altercation. Rosado, her attorney, made a trip to the women’s prison to document what happened — but by the time she got there, Martin was gone. Rosado learned that Martin had been transferred to a prison in Illinois without her family or legal team being notified. Rosado said this unexpected move made it more difficult for her to file a civil lawsuit against the South Carolina Department of Corrections at the time.

It took nearly two months for Rosado to find Martin in Illinois. 

“And then Illinois acted like they didn’t know where she was half the time. It was horrible,” Rosado said of the search for her client.

While in Illinois, Martin could not be found on the state’s online prison records. Shain, the South Carolina prisons spokesperson, previously told Capital B that Martin’s move was “part of the Interstate Corrections Compact, which is a national agreement between states to house inmates in the situation best suited for them.”

Now, Martin said, she hopes the prosecutor’s office will drop the new charges once the disciplinary records and video evidence are reviewed and evaluated by a judge. In the meantime, she’s soaking in every moment she might have missed if her bond hadn’t been posted for her release ahead of the new trial.

“They ain’t taking no more from me,” Martin said.

One of her surviving sons, 18-year-old Antonio Martin, is preparing to graduate from high school, while her 5-year-old, Judah Kennedy, is about to finish kindergarten.

She added, “I’m living my life.”