Ex-sheriff accused of keeping man in restraint chair for hours in case called ‘cruel and unusual’

In a federal courtroom in Atlanta, a former Georgia sheriff is back in the hot seat.

According to WSB-TV investigative reporter Mark Winne, a jury has now been seated in a civil rights lawsuit accusing former Clayton County Sheriff Victor Hill of keeping a man strapped in a restraint chair for hours in what the complaint calls “cruel and unusual conduct.”

The case centers on Glenn Howell, a landscaper who says a simple billing dispute turned into a nightmare inside the Clayton County Jail.

And this time, a jury will decide how much, if anything, that nightmare is worth.

Landscaping Job Turns Into Legal War

In his reporting, Mark Winne explains that the entire saga started over landscaping work Howell did for one of Hill’s deputies.

Howell says there was a billing dispute over that job. Instead of a normal argument about an invoice, he claims then-Sheriff Hill personally interceded on behalf of his deputy, getting involved with phone calls and text messages.

Winne reports that the dispute eventually led to a misdemeanor harassing communications warrant against Howell.

Howell maintains he was innocent of harassing anyone. But a warrant is a warrant, and he eventually surrendered himself at the jail to answer the charge.

At that point, this should have been a routine booking on a low-level offense.

Instead, according to Howell and his lawsuit, it turned into something much darker.

Six And A Half Hours In The Chair

Winne says Howell claims that after he turned himself in, he was strapped into a restraint chair for about six and a half hours.

Howell told Winne in a 2023 interview that he was compliant and never resisted. This wasn’t a violent brawl, a riot, or a suicide attempt. He says he just ended up in the chair and stayed there.

In a clip Winne replayed, Howell recalled what he looked like when he was finally taken out of the device.

“When you got out of that chair, how big were your hands?” Winne asked him.

“They were the size of softballs,” Howell answered.

That one image alone – hands swollen “the size of softballs” –  paints a disturbing picture.

Restraint chairs are supposed to be a last resort for people who are actively dangerous to themselves or others. If Howell’s account is accurate, this was something else entirely: punishment.

‘Torture’ And ‘Vigilante Sheriff,’ Attorney Says

Winne reports that Howell’s civil attorney, Darryl Scott, did not mince words in his opening statement to the jury.

Scott called what happened to Howell “torture.” He also labeled Hill a “vigilante sheriff.”

According to Winne, the lawsuit accuses Hill and others of “cruel and unusual conduct” that was carried out “willfully, deliberately, sadistically, maliciously and in conscious disregard” for Howell’s rights under the Fourteenth Amendment.

That’s not just colorful language.

In civil rights law, words like “sadistic” and “malicious” are meant to signal to the court that this wasn’t a mistake or an accident – it was intentional punishment of someone who was legally presumed innocent.

The Fourteenth Amendment protects pretrial detainees from unreasonable and excessive punishment before they’ve ever been convicted.

If a jury believes that Howell was calm, restrained, and left in that chair for more than six hours just because he crossed the sheriff in a personal dispute, it’s hard not to see why his lawyer chose the word “torture.”

And if a sheriff uses his office to settle a private score, the term “vigilante” doesn’t feel that far-fetched either.

Hill’s Defense: Rights Violated, But No Damages

Former Sheriff Hill is already a controversial figure, and Winne reminds viewers why.

Many of the facts in Howell’s lawsuit, according to Hill’s civil attorney Michael Hoffer, surfaced earlier in a federal civil rights criminal case. Hill was convicted in that case over his use of restraint chairs and has already served his sentence.

In an interview with Winne, Hoffer openly acknowledged that Howell’s rights were violated.

Winne asked him directly, “You don’t dispute that Glenn Howell’s civil rights were violated in that restraint chair?”

“That’s been established by the criminal conviction,” Hoffer replied.

That’s a remarkable admission from a defense lawyer.

The fight now isn’t over whether Howell’s rights were violated. It’s over who pays and how much.

Hoffer told Winne that this is “a civil suit, so it’s about money damages, and that’s what Mr. Howell is seeking.”

He argued that Hill did not put his hands on Howell, did not tell anyone to inflict pain on him, and that a deputy and nurse checked the restraints and said they were properly applied.

In other words, Hill’s side is arguing that while the conviction acknowledged a constitutional violation, Hill shouldn’t be held fully responsible for the physical and emotional damage Howell claims he suffered.

That’s a tough needle to thread.

If you’re the sheriff, you run the jail. You might not buckle the straps yourself, but you set the tone, the policy, and the expectations. When a person sits in a chair for six and a half hours over a misdemeanor warrant tied to a personal dispute, it is hard to believe that’s just a paperwork error.

A First-Of-Its-Kind Conviction

Winne also reports that Hoffer emphasized one unusual fact:

Hill is the first and only law enforcement official in the entire United States to be arrested, tried, and convicted over the use of a restraint chair.

Hoffer acknowledged to Winne that that conviction was affirmed by a federal appeals court.

On one hand, that makes Hill’s situation unique.

On the other, it raises a troubling question: if this is the first conviction, does that mean other officers who abused restraint chairs in other places simply were never charged?

Winne notes that a court document says Hill’s criminal conviction “arose from his punishment of Howell and five other compliant, nonresistant detainees by leaving them in a restraint chair for hours at a time.”

So Howell, according to that document, wasn’t alone.

He was one of six people allegedly subjected to this kind of treatment: restrained, compliant, and held in the chair for hours.

If true, that sounds less like a one-off mistake and more like a pattern – a way of doing business at the jail.

When you see restraint chairs used that way, they stop looking like safety tools and start looking like modern stocks – a way to humiliate and hurt people under color of law.

Why This Restraint Chair Case Matters

Winne’s reporting makes it clear this isn’t just a local personality clash or a grudge over landscaping.

It’s a test of how far an elected sheriff can go in using jail tools on people he doesn’t like, and what “justice” looks like after a criminal conviction has already come and gone.

On paper, Howell already got a form of justice when Hill was convicted in federal court and his conviction was upheld on appeal.

But as Winne explains, the civil arena is different. It’s about damages, accountability, and sending a message about what kind of conduct will cost a county – and its leaders – real money.

From a broader perspective, cases like this force a hard question:

What do we actually expect from the people who run our jails?

If a sheriff can turn a personal disagreement into six and a half hours in a restraint chair, that’s a massive imbalance of power.

It also sends a chilling signal to ordinary citizens who do work for law enforcement officers, argue over a bill, or speak out against someone in uniform.

Restraint chairs have a legitimate place in corrections when used correctly – when someone is actively harming themselves or others, or completely out of control.

But if they become a discipline tool or a punishment device for compliant detainees, they cross the line from security equipment into instruments of abuse.

Mark Winne’s report shows a system trying to sort all of that out, one jury at a time.

Hill has already faced criminal consequences. Now, a civil jury will decide whether Glenn Howell deserves compensation for what his lawyer calls “torture,” and whether a sheriff’s power can ever be allowed to stretch as far as a restraint chair holding a compliant man for hours.

In the end, this isn’t just about Victor Hill or Glenn Howell.

It’s about whether the phrase “cruel and unusual” still means something when the person in the chair isn’t a headline yet – just a citizen with swollen hands and a story that, until now, most people never heard.