A Warren County man faces charges after his second fight in the Warren County Jail since December.

Cody Phinney, 31, was charged Thursday with simple assault, disorderly conduct engaged in fighting and harassment after an alleged incident in the Warren County Jail on April 13. Phinney was charged in late December with aggravated assault – attempts to cause serious bodily injury or causes injury with extreme indifference, a class 1 felony, simple assault and harassment – subjecting another to physical contact for incidents that allegedly happened Dec. 10.

According to the Affidavit of Probable Cause filed in connection with the April 13 incident, Warren city police officers responded to the jail for a reported assault involving inmates in the facility. A corrections officer in the jail told police officers she was dispatched to a disturbance in the jail’s pod after yelling was allegedly heard coming from the bathroom. The officer reported seeing Phinney leaving the bathroom while experiencing physical fatigue as if he had just done physical labor. Another inmate left the bathroom at the same time. The officer went into the bathroom and found an inmate unconscious with multiple cuts, bruises and bleeding from his face. The inmate was taken to Warren General Hospital for treatment.

“I spoke with the victim, who reports that the defendant waved him into the bathroom, where he began to ask him questions regarding snitching to the Drug Task Force,” the affidavit states. “At this time the defendant struck the victim in the face and then kneed him in the face, causing the victim to fall to the ground. The victim reports that he believes that if the fight had not been stopped, he would have been killed.”

There are no cameras in the jail’s bathrooms, but video footage reviewed by police reportedly shows Phinney sitting at a table before he got up and waved the victim to follow him into the bathroom. Both men enter the room at the same time. Another inmate told police, according to the affidavit, that he walked into the bathroom and saw that Phinney “had him on the ground.”

A preliminary hearing in the case will be heard by Magisterial District Judge Raymond Zydonik on May 14.

Phinney had been charged in June 2024 after a methamphetamine raid on a trailer in Clarendon. Phinney was sentenced in October to 5 to 10 months in a state correctional institution and 1 to 2 months in prison to run consecutively after being found guilty of fraudulently altering, forging or counterfeiting title, registration and insurance information and possession of drug paraphernalia to satisfy one set of charges against him filed by the Warren Police Department.

Phinney then was sentenced to 2 to 4 months to run consecutively to his first sentence for a charge of fleeing/attempting to elude a law enforcement officer, and two terms of 6 to 12 months to run consecutively for convictions of recklessly endangering another person.

Phinney was then sentenced to 1 to 2 months to run consecutively for reckless driving, a fine for violations of stop sign and yield sign laws and fines for driving an unregistered vehicle, required financial responsibility and operating a vehicle without a valid inspection.

The final set of charges resulted in 2 to 6 months in prison to run consecutively after a conviction for DUI: controlled substances, 3 to 6 months after a conviction for possessing/selling/using display documents and fines for operating a vehicle without valid inspection, careless driving, driving while under suspension and driving an unregistered vehicle.

Those sentences don’t include potential punishment for the alleged jail fights.