BATON ROUGE - Four former East Baton Rouge Sheriff's Office correctional deputies were indicted for abusing inmates, lying about their injuries, filing false reports and convincing other employees to lie for them. 

A federal grand jury indicted Deputy Aaron Johnson, 29, Cpl. Kenyaki Domino, 29, Deputy Darius Powell, 24, and Cpl. Lionel James, 30, on 17 combined counts of civil rights violations while they were assigned to duty at the East Baton Rouge Parish Prison. The allegations date back to 2022 and 2023. 

All four were indicted on charges of abuse of rights under the color of law, conspiracy and false report. Both Powell and Johnson were indicted on additional counts of witness tampering. 

According to the indictment, two inmates and one pretrial detainee were beaten in separate incidents while in custody. In each report, inmates were described as "isolated and unresisting."

Documents say that in 2022, Domino slammed an inmate's head into a doorframe while he was escorting him down a hallway. 

In January 2023, Johnson and Powell allegedly took an inmate into an interview room before punching him. The inmate was beaten and pepper-sprayed, documents say. The pair reportedly fabricated a story that the inmate broke Powell's glasses and ran it by their supervisor, Domino, before submitting two fake reports. 

Documents say Powell made two Instagram posts after the reported abuse, which said "I really broke dude jaw back here," including laughing emojis and a photo of Powell's bloody knuckles. 

Following the posts, an official investigation was launched. Powell and Johnson allegedly coerced another deputy who was standing outside the door to tell his supervisors that he did not know what happened inside the interview room and could not hear the reported screaming, which was picked up by the prison's security system. 

The following month, the four allegedly punched, kicked and pepper-sprayed a different inmate at a sally port, which was not on security cameras. Documents say that after the beating, the group conspired together to cover up what happened. They allegedly copied parts of reports about what happened from one another, strengthening the lie about why they were there and what happened. 

In March 2023, Johnson reportedly brought a pretrial detainee to the same sally port where the inmate was beaten in and hit the detainee with a metal chair. He reportedly slid the bloody chair on top of a ceiling-mounted air conditioning vent. Johnson allegedly told a lieutenant that they should not believe the detainee if he said he was hit with a chair, because there wasn't a chair in the area. 

All four face up to 10 years in prison on the abuse of rights and conspiracy counts, and up to 20 years on the false report and witness tampering offenses.