u.s. marshals

Sir Robert Martin-Sydnor was charged with murder in the death of Raphael Jones in Columbus on June 9. U.S. Marshals arrested him in Dayton on Wednesday.

Authorities say a man exchanged gunfire with members of a U.S. Marshal’s task force serving a warrant inside a home in Columbus.

Advocates for reforms at the Cuyahoga County Jail are trying to keep the pressure on county leaders, seven months after a U.S. Marshals Service report called conditions at the facility “inhumane.” A coalition of activist groups rallied outside the Justice Center on Monday morning before packing a justice reform meeting chaired by the county executive and presiding common pleas judge.

Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine is ordering the state to conduct monthly inspections of the Cuyahoga County Jail, threatening "additional legal action" if conditions at the facility don't improve. The governor's office has also asked the Ohio Department of Rehabilitation and Correction to more than double the staff of the bureau that conducts jail inspections, according to a Thursday news release.

Three months after a report detailing problems at the Cuyahoga County Jail, the U.S. Marshals Service says it has not returned its detainees to the downtown jail. In November, the U.S. Marshal’s office in Washington released a report on the county jail system that described a long list of what it called “inhumane” conditions. U.S. Marshal Peter Elliot, head of the Cleveland office, stopped bringing detainees to the jail downtown.

A U.S. Marshals probe of the Cuyahoga County jail uncovered conditions so severe that they put the safety of staff and inmates at risk, according to a report released Wednesday morning. Among the Marshals’ findings were that the jail used food as a form of punishment, that meals failed to meet nutritional standards, that inmates received inadequate medical care and that defendants awaiting court were placed in cells without working toilets or running water.