William Fuller III, 40, an inmate at the United States Penitentiary at Marion, Illinois, was sentenced today in United States District Court in Benton to an additional term of 77 months in prison for possessing two weapons in that facility and using them to assault another inmate, announced James L. Porter, Acting United States Attorney for the Southern District of Illinois. The offenses were committed at USP-Marion on April 6, 2015. Fuller pled guilty to those charges on October 15th.
Evidence adduced in support of the guilty plea and sentence showed that Fuller attacked the victim from behind while the victim was sitting at a table wearing a pair of bulky headphones. As captured on the prison’s video surveillance system, Fuller pulled a sock filled with chunks of concrete out of his clothing and struck the victim on the left side of the head with it. The blow shattered the headphones the victim was wearing and resulted in a deep laceration to the side of his face that would have been much more serious but for the headphones absorbing the majority of the impact. Fuller then pulled a second weapon from his clothing, a metal combination lock tied to a lanyard, and chased the victim up a set of stairs while swinging both weapons over his head in a threatening manner until prison officials were able to intervene.
At the time of the assault, Fuller was serving a 262 federal sentence imposed in the Northern District of Illinois for various drug offenses. The 77 month sentence in this case was imposed consecutively to that sentence. In addition, Fuller was placed on 3 years of supervised release to follow his incarceration and was ordered to pay the United States $300 in special assessments. Fuller was immediately returned to the custody of the Federal Bureau of Prisons to resume serving his sentences.
The case was investigated by the Federal Bureau of Investigation with the assistance of the Federal Bureau of Prisons and was prosecuted by Assistant United States Attorney James M. Cutchin.