PROSECUTOR IN PRISON RAPE CASE SAYS NOBODY IS ABOVE THE LAW

COURTS: The defense team is expected to wrap up its summation by this
afternoon.

HANFORD - Four guards at one of the state's toughest prisons left an inmate
in a cell with a known sexual predator to "teach him how to do his time," a
prosecutor said in closing arguments Wednesday.

The Corcoran State Prison guards allegedly set up rapes of Eddie Dillard
over three days in March 1993 to punish him for kicking a female guard at
another prison.

"When this case began I used the phrase 'no one is above the law.' Now I
have to ask, 'Or are they?'" said Deputy Attorney General Vern Pierson. "Is
someone above the law because they carry a badge?"

The prosecution finished its closing arguments Wednesday and the defense
team is expected to wrap up its summation by this afternoon.

Sgts. Robert Decker, 41, and Dale Brakebill, 34, and officers Anthony
Sylva, 36, and Joe Sanchez, 38, all are charged with aiding and abetting
sodomy in concert and face up to nine years in prison if convicted.

Pierson said the defendants knew what would happen if they put Dillard, in
prison for assault with a deadly weapon, in the cell with Wayne Robertson,
who at 220 pounds was almost twice his size.

Robertson is doing life without the possibility of parole for a 1979 murder
conviction.

Documents listing Robertson as a "cellee raper" and designating him and
Dillard as enemies show that the guards knew Robertson's reputation and
that the two inmates should never have been put in the same cell, Pierson
said.

Robertson admitted to rapping Dillard. He also testified that guards knew
his reputation and that he was sometimes used by them to punish unruly
inmates. The four defendants to Dillard if the two of them were left alone
together, Robertson testified.