JACKSON, Mississippi (AP) — Federal prosecutors say Ricardo Gonzalez-Porras has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder related to a deadly prison riot in Mississippi.
Gonzalez-Porras will be sentenced on April 7 in U.S. District Court in Jackson. He faces a maximum sentence of life in prison. He entered the plea Wednesday,
One guard was killed and 20 people were injured in the May 20, 2012, riot at the privately-run Adams County Correctional Facility in Natchez.
The prison holds nearly 2,500 inmates, most of them convicted on charges of coming back to the U.S. after deportation for being in the country illegally. The prison is owned by Nashville, Tennessee-based Corrections Corporation of America, one of the nation’s largest private prison companies.
Several other inmates have been charged — or convicted — with participating in the riot.