In August 2011, Mark Nunez typed out a lawsuit in opposition to town, a yr after a workforce of jail officers on Rikers Island beat him with a radio, dragged him down a hallway and stripped him bare.
In an upstate jail on the time, Nunez was not a lawyer, and relied on recommendation from two savvy older inmates who labored within the regulation library to write down the nine-page grievance.
A couple of yr later, his swimsuit was mixed right into a intently watched class motion case alleging town has failed to deal with violence and use of drive within the jails.
The case grew to become generally known as Nunez vs. the Metropolis of New York. 13 years later, the case has made, at the least in felony justice circles, the identify Nunez a family phrase.
Now somewhat extra reflective, Nunez talked in a public library close to his house as his 5-year-old twin sons, Milo and Kash, performed on a pc. His third son, Zion, 9, was at camp.
One of many ironies of Nunez’s story, and one thing that also rankles him, is he acquired simply $75,000 in a 2015 settlement. In the meantime, the case has turn into its personal trade. The fee to taxpayers of the federal monitor alone has been $26.1 million over eight years, town mentioned Thursday.
And at the same time as his identify has turn into an emblem of jail reform, Nunez needed to file for chapter in 2024, information present.
Nunez’s case tells two tales: the journey of the person himself and the authorized wrangling round him.
“The people at the heart of these cases take on this almost mythical status,” mentioned Hernandez Stroud, senior fellow with the Brennan Heart for Justice. “His story highlights some of the very real tensions that exist in people’s quest for justice given the vehicles that are available.”
For his or her half, Nunez case legal professionals Mary Lynne Werlwas of Authorized Assist and Jonathan Abady of Emery Celli lauded his “courage and skill in overcoming the enormous obstacles to pro se plaintiffs.”
“The abuse he suffered was emblematic of the pattern of brutality in the jails,” they mentioned. Former Correction Commissioner Vincent Schiraldi referred to as Nunez’s contribution “among the most consequential acts of jail reform in the city’s history.”
Courtesy of Mark Nunez
Mark Nunez is pictured in 2014. (Courtesy of Mark Nunez)
Mark Nunez grew up within the Bronx close to Yankee Stadium. His mother was a foster care social employee, his dad, a constructing superintendent.
He first landed on Rikers Island at age 15 for theft. There, he remembers a struggle with one other teen over the cellphone. He was delivered to a room by a 300-pound officer who slapped him and threatened him, utilizing the N-word, he recounted.
At 26, he was busted for a number of financial institution robberies after cops put out his image. He mentioned he remembers his mom telling him, “You know, there’s someone on the TV that looks just like you’.”
“I didn’t have to turn to the streets. It was a choice,” he mentioned. “Back then I used to live life with no control. Now I have more control.”
On March 4, 2010, he was ready within the Robert N. Davoren Heart to go upstate to begin his sentence.
An uproar began after a rookie correction officer, irked at meals left within the pantry from the earlier night time, broken the unit’s telephones, he alleged. Sooner or later she hit her private physique alarm summoning the “turtles” — an emergency squad in helmets and physique armor.
Nunez mentioned the younger officer instructed him she hit her button accidentally. When somebody mouthed off on the captain, he used pepper spray on the group, Nunez mentioned. He then discovered himself on the ground being hit by the radio.
Nunez mentioned he was then dragged down a protracted hallway out of the tier to consumption in entrance of a gaggle of New York Metropolis Division of Correction supervisors in white shirts and fits.
“They were all lined up, looking at us and laughing,” he mentioned. “I was stripped butt naked, they had all these big officers saying, ‘We’ll kill you right here.’”
Getty
Rikers Island. (Getty)
Nunez says he couldn’t really feel his proper hand for 2 months from the cuffs. The subsequent morning he was bused to Downstate Correctional Facility in Fishkill.
“They put a notation on my paperwork that said I like to assault officers. When I got to the state, they put me in a room with a whole bunch of officers and [they] said, ‘We ain’t gonna have no issue out of you, or we’ll f–k you up’.”
From Downstate, Nunez was shipped 280 miles to Gouverneur Correctional Facility, by the Canada border. He determined to sue over the Rikers beating.
“It was the humiliation I went through for no reason,” he mentioned. “I wasn’t a threat to the officers.”
When his household had bother discovering a lawyer to take the case, he determined to file the case himself. Underneath 28 USC 1654, federal regulation permits people to file lawsuits “pro se,” Latin for “one’s own behalf.” Roughly 1,400 individuals a yr file professional se lawsuits in New York’s Southern District, most are dismissed.
He wrote out his story and made the regulation library a part of his jail routine. There, Nunez met Harry Elmore, then 60, who had by then been in jail for 33 years for the 1977 homicide in Harlem of a lady whereas he was on jail furlough.
Elmore labored within the library and shared recommendation and case citations with different inmates. “He taught me the concept of ‘fruit from the poisonous tree.’ He sent a lot of guys home. I typed it up in the law library, and he really souped it up,” Nunez mentioned. “He told me, ‘That complaint is so bad, be careful. Put it in after you go home.’”
Elmore was paroled in 2016, information present. Nunez mentioned he noticed him within the Bronx a while after that.
Courtesy of Mark Nunez
Mark Nunez in 2017 with Harry Elmore, who helped Nunez write his professional se grievance. (Courtesy of Mark Nunez)
“He said, ‘I don’t have much time to live so they let [me] out,’” Nunez says. “He was helping me on another case. When I went later to visit him at his shelter, they told me he had died.”
A number of months earlier than his launch, Nunez was moved to Queensboro Correctional Facility in Lengthy Island Metropolis. For remaining revisions, Nunez turned to a different inmate and self-styled “litigation specialist,” Anthony Anderson, now 58.
“I paid him like $300, but he said there’s not much I can do with it, it was already good,” Nunez mentioned.
Nunez then mailed the grievance through the jail publish workplace to the professional se clerk in Federal District Courtroom in Manhattan. The clerk stamped it “received” on Aug. 18, 2011, at 3:11 p.m., information present.
“I was just released from state correction and I am job searching,” he wrote within the declaration in search of to characterize himself.
After rising from jail, Nunez says sooner or later he encountered Jonathan Chasen, then the director of Authorized Assist’s Prisoners Rights Undertaking, who was working with Emery Celli and a second agency Ropes and Grey on the broader class motion.
Nunez mentioned he agreed so as to add his case to that of 10 others who had additionally suffered severe accidents from officers. On Might 24, 2012, the amended grievance was filed — from his modest 9 pages it swelled to 89 pages, and the place there have been no legal professionals now there have been 9 named attorneys.
The expanded swimsuit sought, it mentioned, to “end the pattern and practice of unnecessary and excessive force inflicted upon inmates of New York City jails … knowingly permitted and encouraged by department supervisors.”
Barry Williams/ New York Each day Information
Mark Nunez, prime, poses together with his kids (prime to backside) Zion, 9, Milo, 5, and Kash, 5, in Harlem on Thursday. (Barry Williams/ New York Each day Information)
The case impressed the Obama period Justice Division to speed up an investigation into Rikers and triggered an explosion of media curiosity within the jails.
He discovered jobs with film and TV manufacturing corporations and labored for years on units for reveals like “Law & Order” and streaming sequence like “The Plot Against America.”
“I was just trying to survive,” he says. “Life was hitting.”
In 2014, Nunez discovered himself in a confrontation in Bronx Legal Courtroom, in response to a lawsuit he later filed, as soon as once more professional se.
He alleged he and his girlfriend have been in line to take care of a summons for strolling their canine and not using a leash. A courtroom officer ordered him to the again of the road, “else you ain’t gonna see no f—–g judge today!”
Nunez was tackled and jailed for seven days, he alleged.
Within the ensuing lawsuit, Nunez listed himself as a “production assistant and truck driver” who made $26,000 within the earlier yr. He wrote that his checking account had a zero steadiness and he had a 2-year-old son, Zion.
“I’m pro se and don’t have the resources to file in the required time,” he wrote. “I have no money in my savings and I am struggling to live check to check.”
The case was dismissed on technical grounds, he says.
In one other occasion, Nunez acquired a wierd response from a police officer when he was pulled over someday within the Bronx.
“I had a blunt [marijuana] in my hand. They took my ID, ran my name, came back, said, ‘Have a nice day Mr. Nunez’,” he mentioned. “It was like they had seen too much of me.”
In 2015, he did return to Rikers to go to a relative. He says the officers made him stroll repeatedly via the metallic detector despite the fact that it wasn’t alerting.
Hoping to keep away from confrontation, he moved to depart. However officers blocked him in and pulled him right into a room.
Within the room, on one wall, he mentioned, was an indication that cited the Nunez case and urged detainees who declare they’d been assaulted by an officer to name a cellphone quantity. It was not clear if that was a authorized commercial or tied to town’s consent decree.
“My case law was on the wall,” Nunez says. “I wanted to file a retaliation case and went to the law firm, and they said it wasn’t a big enough case for them. That hurt my heart.”
In the meantime, in these wood-paneled rooms downtown, a lot had been taking place. On June 22, 2015, beneath strain from the Justice Division, the de Blasio administration signed a consent decree or settlement which created the monitor and compelled town to put in 8,000 cameras within the jails.
The deal additionally offered $3.5 million to be divided among the many 11 named plaintiffs. Nunez acquired $75,000. When he requested why that quantity, he says he was instructed, “That’s what the case is worth based on your injuries.”
After legal professional charges, Nunez says he acquired roughly $47,000. He used most of that to repay money owed.
“They screwed me over, though,” Nunez says. “Yes, there were others who had more severe trauma, but I feel I should have gotten more than $75,000 because my case brought their cases together.”
After that, he stopped actually following the journey of the high-profile class motion. In 2016, his son Zion was born, adopted by the twins in 2019. His relationship with their mother ended, although they proceed to co-parent, he says.
He determined to maneuver on from Hollywood manufacturing corporations, and has pushed a shuttle bus at Kennedy Airport, a truck for a corporation that produces youth dance competitions across the nation, and helped construct promoting installations for a advertising and marketing agency.
However he was pressured to file for chapter in July 2024, citing 1000’s of {dollars} in bank card debt, information present.
“I got myself in a financial hole,” he mentioned. “I purchased a car, and the payments were too much and so I felt the best thing I could do for my credit was file bankruptcy.”
In the meantime, within the Rikers case, the 2 sides have been haggling over a looming contempt order, which Decide Laura Swain authorised final November, discovering town did not adjust to courtroom orders over the eight years of the monitor. The order set the stage for her historic ruling in Might that town can’t run the system by itself — an out of doors supervisor was wanted as properly.
Nunez’s chapter case was resolved in September, the information present. The category motion stays very a lot unresolved, because the current docket entries present.
Courtesy of Mark Nunez
A cityscape by Mark Nunez reveals Rikers Island within the background. (Courtesy of Mark Nunez)
By means of all of it, Nunez finds peace in serving to to boost his sons and in his images passion. He likes to make his method onto rooftops and {photograph} town.
“I name them ‘voyages’ since you by no means know the place you’re going to finish up, “ he says.
With Nicholas Williams
Initially Revealed: July 7, 2025 at 7:00 AM EDT
