GUARDS ACCUSED OF ARRANGING ATTACKS

Cresent City Prison Employees Allegedly Pitted Inmates
Against Each Other

SAN FRANCISCO - Two more former Pelican Bay State Prison guards have
been charged with violating the civil rights of inmates of the
maximum-security prison by setting up attacks, one of them fatal, by
other prisoners over a nearly three-year period.

The indictment of - E. Michael Powers and Jose Ramon Garcia was made
public Wednesday, nine days after another former guard was convicted
of a civil right violation for shooting a Pelican Bay prisoner in 1994.

The prison near Cresent City also was the site of a riot Wednesday
that started as a fight between black and Hispanic inmates, a prison
spokesman said. One inmate was fatally shot by guards.

There was no apparent connection between the riot and the new
indictment, which stemmed from a long-running federal investigation of
a group of Pelican Bay guards.

The prison was also the target of a civil rights suit by inmates that
led to a federal judge's finding in 1995 of systematic use of
unjustified force by guards, in violation of the constitutional ban
on cruel and unusual punishment.

Another top-security state prison, at Corcoran near Fresno, also has
been the site of recent brutality charges.

Federal authorities have accused eight guards of staging "gladiator"
fight between prisoners. Four other guards were acquitted last
November of setting up the rape of an inmate. A state panel in 1998
found no justification for five fatal shootings by Corcoran guards, a
finding that led the prison system to repeal a policy that allowed
guards to use gunfire to break up fistfights.

The guard convicted last week, David E. Lewis, was alleged by
prosecutors to have deliberately shot a prisoner after a fight in the
yard in the mistaken belief that the inmate was a child molester.
Powers and Garcia were similarly accused in the indictment of
targeting prisoners because they were sex offenders or "otherwise
disfavored."

Garcia, 44, is already in prison, serving a sentence of 4 years and 8
months after being convicted in Del Norte County Superior Court in
1998 of conspiring to assault inmates.

However, the jury in that case rejected allegations that Garcia was
involved in the attacks that were cited in Wednesday's indictment,
said Marjorie F. Knoller, a lawyer whose firm has represented both
Garcia and Powers. She said both men deny arranging attacks on any
prisoners.

Powers, 54, was placed on leave after being escorted from the prison
in March 1998. The charge against him and Garcia is punishable by up
to 10 years in prison.

The indictment accuses the guards of conspiring between July 1992 and
February 1995 to arrange attacks on prisoners by asking other inmates
to assault them.

CALIFORNIA PRISONS

)NATION'S LARGEST:

California has the nation's largest corrections system, with 161,000
inmates in its 33 prisons.

)DEADLY SYSTEM:

California's prison system is the deadliest in the United States, with
443 violent inmate deaths since 1970, according to 1999 statistics.

)TOUGHER CONTROLS:

Regulations were put in place in 1995 limiting the use of firearms to
break up fistfights, after The Orange County Register reported that at
least 27 California inmates were shot to death by guards from 1989 to
1994. That figure is three times greater than in all other state and
federal prisons in the same period.