🌎 Resumen en español · traducción automática
Un segundo oficial de correcciones en el Centro Médico Federal de Lexington se declaró culpable de falsificar registros para encubrir la golpiza de un interno en junio de 2025, lo que representa la segunda condena federal en este caso de abuso carcelario. Jonathan Grady Vago admitió haber escrito un informe falso sobre el uso de la fuerza para obstruir una investigación del Departamento de Justicia, enfrentando hasta 20 años de prisión con sentencia programada para el 22 de octubre. Este caso se suma a la condena anterior de Ryan Carnahan, el oficial que golpeó al interno, quien también se declaró culpable de falsificar registros y violar los derechos civiles del prisionero.
Traducción y resumen generados por IA a partir del artículo en inglés. Puede contener errores; consulte el texto original.
A second correctional officer at the Federal Medical Center in Lexington has pleaded guilty to filing a false report to cover up the beating of an inmate in the prison’s Special Housing Unit — a June 2025 assault that has now produced federal convictions against two of the three guards who walked into the man’s cell.
Jonathan Grady Vago pleaded guilty Wednesday before U.S. District Judge Karen K. Caldwell to a single felony count of falsifying records in a federal investigation, admitting he wrote a false account of the use of force to impede a Justice Department inquiry into it. He is scheduled to be sentenced Oct. 22 and faces up to 20 years in prison, though the sentencing guidelines the parties recommended are far lower.
Vago’s case was charged by criminal information and resolved with a waiver of indictment and an immediate guilty plea — the hallmarks of a negotiated deal. It is the second conviction to come out of the same incident. In May, senior officer specialist Ryan Carnahan, 32 — the officer who actually struck the inmate — pleaded guilty to both falsifying records and depriving the inmate of his civil rights under color of law. Carnahan is set to be sentenced Aug. 20.
What the officers admitted
The account that follows comes entirely from the factual bases the two men signed and admitted to be true in their plea agreements. The government noted in each that the stipulated facts “do not encompass all of the evidence” it was prepared to present at trial.
On June 28, 2025, Carnahan — a senior officer specialist, the same rank as Vago — got into a verbal argument with an inmate identified in the court records only as “Inmate A,” who was locked behind the door of his cell in the SHU, the prison’s most restrictive housing. Carnahan called Vago, who was also working the unit, to the cell door, and a third officer joined them.
Carnahan asked for Vago’s handcuffs and told Inmate A to submit to being cuffed. The inmate refused. Carnahan dropped the handcuffs through the food-tray slot onto the cell floor, then opened the door, and all three officers walked in — even though neither Inmate A nor his cellmate was handcuffed and, both plea agreements stipulate, “there were no exigent circumstances that required the officers to enter the cell.”
Once inside, Carnahan “began slapping Inmate A’s face repeatedly,” according to the admitted facts. The inmate hit him back. Carnahan then grabbed the man and punched him, and Inmate A was taken to the ground and handcuffed. In his own plea, Carnahan admitted the assault was willful, violated the inmate’s constitutional right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, and caused bodily injury.
Two false reports
Both officers then wrote it up as something else.
Carnahan first told his lieutenant — who asked him about the incident immediately afterward — that the inmate had “slipped his handcuffs.” He then filed a written report claiming Inmate A and his cellmate had been cuffed before the officers ever entered, and that he was searching the cell when the inmate slipped free and attacked him. He admitted he knew that was false.
Vago’s report told the same story from his vantage point. He wrote that Inmate A “had been handcuffed” before the officers went in — a statement Vago “knew” was untrue, according to his plea. He wrote that he was searching the cell when he “became aware of aggressive sounds behind [him]” and turned to see the inmate in “an aggressive stance” with Carnahan “stepping back,” and that Inmate A “was taken to the ground utilizing the least amount of force necessary.” What Vago left out, he admitted, was everything he had actually watched happen: Carnahan striking the inmate first, the inmate hitting back, and Carnahan then punching him.
Each man admitted he wrote what he did to obstruct the investigation of the assault — a matter within the jurisdiction of the U.S. Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General, which, together with the FBI, investigated the case. Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily Greenfield is prosecuting both cases.
Two guards, two different deals
Although the two officers walked into the same cell, their plea agreements are not the same.
Carnahan pleaded to two counts, including the civil-rights count that carries the beating itself. His agreement also permanently bars him from ever again working in law enforcement — as a police officer, jailer, correctional officer, military police officer or deputy sheriff — and requires him to file a sworn affidavit to that effect with the Kentucky Law Enforcement Council and the Bureau of Prisons, and to authorize the Bureau to release it to any future law-enforcement employer that asks. He was represented by retained counsel.
Vago pleaded to the single falsification count, and the government agreed not to bring any further charges against him arising from the incident. His agreement contains no bar on future law-enforcement work, and he is represented by a court-appointed attorney, Adele Burt Brown. For the falsification count, both sides recommended a base offense level of 14 under the federal sentencing guidelines, before any reduction for accepting responsibility — a recommendation that does not bind the court.
A third officer, not charged
Both plea agreements describe three officers entering the cell. Carnahan and Vago account for two of them. The third — identified in the records only as “Officer B” — entered alongside them but, as of this week, faces no charges in the matter, according to the federal court dockets. The docket in Vago’s case includes a “notice of related prosecutions,” the filing the government uses to flag connected cases.
The setting
The Federal Medical Center in Lexington is a Bureau of Prisons facility on Leestown Road that holds federal inmates who need medical or mental-health care. It has drawn a series of unrelated federal prosecutions of its own staff in recent years, including guilty pleas to bribery and to the sexual abuse of an inmate — cases the U.S. Attorney’s Office for the Eastern District of Kentucky has announced separately.
What’s next
Neither man has been sentenced. Carnahan is scheduled for Aug. 20 and Vago for Oct. 22, both before Judge Caldwell in Lexington. Each waived his right to appeal his conviction and sentence except on narrow grounds.
The facts and quotations in this report are drawn from the signed plea agreements in United States v. Ryan Carnahan, No. 5:26-cr-00050-KKC (read the plea agreement), and United States v. Jonathan Grady Vago, No. 5:26-cr-00072-KKC (read the plea agreement), both in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Kentucky at Lexington — public court records in which each defendant admitted the facts described. The Carnahan plea was announced May 20, 2026, by the Justice Department Office of the Inspector General; the Vago plea, entered July 23, 2026, had not previously been reported.
Sources
- Plea agreement, United States v. Jonathan Grady Vago, No. 5:26-cr-00072-KKC (E.D. Ky. filed July 23, 2026), Doc. 8
- Plea agreement, United States v. Ryan Carnahan, No. 5:26-cr-00050-KKC (E.D. Ky. filed May 19, 2026), Doc. 6
- “Former BOP Correctional Officer Arrested and Pleaded Guilty to Falsification of Records and Deprivation of Rights Under Color of Law,” U.S. DOJ Office of the Inspector General (May 20, 2026)
- “Former FMC Lexington correctional officer pleads guilty to violating inmate’s civil rights,” WKYT (May 25, 2026)
This report was drafted with AI assistance (Claude Opus 4.8) and finalized for publication by The Lexington Times. The reporting is grounded in the defendants’ signed federal plea agreements in United States v. Carnahan (5:26-cr-00050-KKC) and United States v. Vago (5:26-cr-00072-KKC), Eastern District of Kentucky, in which each man admitted the facts described; those admissions were checked against the U.S. Justice Department Office of the Inspector General’s public announcement of the Carnahan plea and contemporaneous local coverage.
Republishing: This is original Lexington Times reporting, licensed under Creative Commons CC BY-ND 4.0. You may republish this article, in full and unaltered, for free — including commercially — with credit to The Lexington Times and a link to the original.
