Correctional Center Nurse Acquitted on Sex Offense Charges

An employee at a Montgomery County correctional facility was acquitted earlier this month on charges that he committed a sexual offense with a male inmate last year.

Francisco Modesto Redona, 51, of Walkersville, was found not guilty on Jan. 18 of one charge of correctional-inmate sexual offense and one charge of second-degree assault stemming from allegations from April 2008 at the Montgomery County Pre-Release Center. The trial took place over four days before Circuit Court Judge David Boynton in Rockville.

Redona was employed as a nurse at the Montgomery County Pre-Release Center on Nebel Street in North Bethesda when he was accused of performing a sexual act on a 35-year-old male inmate on April 29, 2008. The inmate originally came to Redona to obtain nasal spray and a physician’s referral for a medical condition. The inmate told center staff there had been an incident at least 45 minutes later, and the staff subsequently called police.

According to charging documents, police obtained DNA evidence from the inmate and the inmate’s boxer shorts that matched Redona’s DNA.

Redona’s attorney, Andrew Jezic of Wheaton, said the inmate admitted that he was alone for a short period of time in an examination room with tissues and paper towels that had been used by Redona.

Two employees at the Pre-Release Center, including a counselor who had worked with the inmate in 2005, also testified that the inmate was “not a truthful person,” according to Jezic.

Jezic said Redona was currently in the process of trying to get his job back at the Pre-Release Center, where he is on unpaid administrative leave. He said his client had gone through “eight or nine months of hell.” Redona had worked for the county’s correctional system since 2003 and for the Pre-Release Center since 2006.

“The jury got to hear that this is an exemplary person, an exemplary nurse, an exemplary father and husband, and these are false charges,” Jezic said.