`WALL OF SILENCE' SURROUNDED PRISON BRUTALITY

LOS ANGELES -- A top-level inquiry in California into brutality, murder
and corruption at a ``super-maximum'' security jail, has drawn attention
to shocking conditions in a state not generally associated with an
inhumane prison regime

Stunned politicians in the state legislature in Sacramento have heard
about guards at Corcoran Prison shooting prisoners dead, arranging
fights between inmates, instigating at least one rape, and staging a
mass beating of black prisoners. Both the governor, Republican Pete
Wilson, and his attorney general, Dan Lungren, who hopes to succeed to
the governorship in November's elections, have been accused of failing
to investigate Corcoran properly because they received $826,000 in
campaign contributions from the powerful guards' union.

The prison is a ``super-maximum'' security institution 170 miles
northwest of Los Angeles amid cotton fields in the central valley. It
was opened in 1988 for 3,000 inmates, but now holds 5,030, including
Robert Kennedy's assassin Sirhan Sirhan, and the cult leader in the 1969
Sharon Tate murders, Charles Manson.

Between 1989 and 1995, Corcoran guards shot dead seven prisoners and
wounded 43, making it America's deadliest prison. Some shootings, the
inquiry has heard, were on ``gladiator'' days when fights between the
jail's rival gang members were deliberately staged. Guards then
``justified'' the shootings as necessary to stop disturbances they had
already begun.

Investigations by the California Corrections Department and Lungren's
office failed to bring any criminal charges at the prison after meeting
a ``wall of silence'' erected by the guards. A former director of
prisons testified that he agreed with the union in 1996 that if it
dropped a lawsuit against the department, his investigators would not
press questionings.

Prosecutors in the county where the prison is situated also made an
investigation and set up a grand jury hearing. They too were defeated by
the guards' silence and no charges were brought.

A former guard and gun expert, Steven Rigg, testified that he had
analyzed every Corcoran shooting and concluded that none was justified.
``You cannot shoot the victim of a fist-fight and call it a ``good'
shooting,'' he said. ``You cannot use a firearm to stop a stand-up
fist-fight.''

He added that as a whistle-blower he had been subjected to death threats
and intimidation from ex-colleagues, and his wife was still so
frightened she sometimes slept on the bathroom floor. After being
ignored by state officials, Rigg said he went to the Federal Bureau of
Investigation, which in April indicted eight Corcoran guards, and said
there might be more.

At the inquiry, three guards have already exercised their U.S.
constitutional rights not to testify in the alleged rape case. Their
refusal came after disclosure of a case in which a frail inmate weighing
only 120 pounds, who had kicked a female guard, was placed in a cell
with a notoriously violent prisoner weighing 230 poounds who was known
as the ```Booty Bandit'' (slang for his reputation as a sodomite).

He repeatedly raped his new cell mate and was rewarded with extra food
and new tennis shoes. Between the late 1980s and 1990s he was accused of
sexually assaulting 15 inmates, the inquiry heard, but never charged.

The racist beating was perpetrated by a group of guards called the
``Sharks'' because of their unprovoked violent attacks. According to an
eyewitness, off-duty guards were summoned from home to join a group
waiting for a transfer of black prisoners to arrive. For 30 minutes they
engaged in ``limbering up'' like a football team. When the bus arrived
the black prisoners were forced to run a gauntlet of guards who struck
them with batons and kicked them.

State senator Adam Schiff, a Democrat and former criminal prosecutor,
said of the investigation: ``We are hearing witnesses that a grand jury
never heard. We're seeing evidence that wasn't brought to light. Some of
these witnesses didn't volunteer the information because they were
intimidated . . . But a good investigation not only uncovers witnesses
who volunteer, but it digs to find witnesses who do not.'''

More disclosures are likely in a prison system in California that has
been plagued with troubles. Since 1984 the state has built 21 new
prisons and they now number 33 and contain 158,000 inmates. Yet still
they are crowded. Cells originally intended for one, now almost always
are shared by two prisoners.

California's other ``super max'' prison is Pelican Bay in the rainy
northwest just below the Oregon border. This is constructed so that its
3,800 prisoners -- ``the worst of the worst'' as they are known --
cannot see anyone else. Their meals are automatically delivered to their
cells in which they are locked up for 23 hours a day.

Conditions were so harsh that a psychiatrist testified in a civil court
case over the prison that it was driving some inmates insane. In 1991 a
court monitor was appointed to run the prison, but eight inmates have
died since February in rival gang fights.

Checked-by: willtoo