VIDEO OF GUARDS KILLING INMATES AT STATE PRISON

Two men warily stare at each other inside the prison exercise yard.

A sudden lunge.

Fists lock.

A furious round of blows.

Moments later, one of the men topples to the concrete and lies unmoving,
mortally wounded by bullets from a prison gun tower.

Four times this ritualized dance of death transpires, four times a prisoner
dies from a spurt of gunfire by prison guards.

In stark black and white footage, the actual deaths of four inmates at
Corcoran State Prison are depicted in an unsettling video which, according
to its producers, reveals a disturbing pattern of violence at one of the
state's most notorious prisons.

The 40minute tape, reviewed by The Examiner, shows footage recorded by
prison surveillance cameras of four fistfights between 1989 and 1993. Each
came to a swift and bloody finish when the inmates were killed by
correctional officers armed with powerful prisonissue 9mm rifles.

Review boards ruled that all four shootings at Corcoran, 170 miles north of
Los Angeles, were justified and complied with state policy on the use of
deadly force.

But to the San Franciscobased prisoner rights organization California
Prison Focus, which sponsored the making of the video, the images provide
stark proof that the shootings were wholly unjustified.

The footage was obtained via pretrial legal maneuvers in a civil rights
lawsuit. The resulting video, edited and narrated, was first publicly shown
Saturday in a Prison Focus fundraiser at New College of California. Over
the next year, it will be selectively screened for educational purposes,
say members of Prison Focus, a grassroots nonprofit that monitors
conditions in state prisons.

Human Bait

Corcoran inmates were used as human bait, alleges the prison rights group,
with guards deliberately placing known enemies primarily members of
rival gangs into the same exercise yards, turning them into "gladiators"
and making violent outbursts a foregone certainty.

Indeed, Corcoran, one of California's top security lockups, has been the
scene of hundreds of exercise yard flareups provoked, critics allege, by
an "integrated yard policy," that mixes members of rival gangs.

Critics say that the prisoners were gunned down though they posed no real
danger to others.

"This is not just criminal activity by rogue guards, these are human rights
violations," says Dr. Corey Weinstein, a San Francisco physician and board
member of California Prison Focus.

"Lethal force was used on (men) involved in standup fistfights. This is
how the state metes out its punishment. . . . Very little harm could come
from a fight like this. These were like schoolyard standup fistfights."
State probe cleared prison

The video, titled "Maximum Security University," is being unveiled less
than a month after the state concluded a criminal investigation into the
alleged use of excessive force against inmates by guards at Corcoran.

Following the yearlong inquiry, Corcoran was cleared of charges alleging
widespread staff misconduct. Disciplinary action against 13 staffers,
including two dismissals, was made in four isolated findings of staff
misconduct none involving serious injuries.

An FBI investigation into the matter still continues.

Critics charge that Corcoran reports were sanitized and staff wrongdoing
covered up.

"My belief is that . . . officers who want to keep their jobs have been
tacitly instructed to keep the code of silence about what went on there,"
says Catherine Campbell, a Fresno civil rights attorney representing
plaintiffs in the wrongful death suit of Preston Tate, a Los Angeles man
killed in Corcoran's exercise yard in 1994. Tate was a convicted rapist
and, like other fatally shot inmates, a gang member.

"Of course, inevitably they will come up with a report that does not tell
the truth," Campbell charges. "Sacramento doesn't want the truth to be
known and it is in the interests of the people they interviewed not to tell
the truth. That is why a government agency should not investigate itself."

'Predatory, Violent, Sadistic'

Christine May, a spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections, declined to
respond to the charges.

"We can't comment without having seen the video," she said.

But Mike Jimenez, executive vice president of the California Correctional
Peace Officers Association, says the Corcoran shootings should be viewed in
terms of the violence that the incarcerated men were capable of committing.

"I don't know that we are always going to make the right decision, but the
wrong decision is not always made," says Jimenez, who has not seen the video.

"We are dealing with the most predatory, violent, sadistic individuals in
the whole world at Corcoran. They are out there trying to kill each other.
They know that there is a guard directly above them yet they choose to
fight . . . in front of a man or a woman who is supposed to use (their
weapons) to prevent great bodily harm. I'm not justifying the shootings,
I'm not saying any of them deserved to die, but these individuals are not
kind and warmhearted."

Jimenez said that prison guards do not shoot to kill: "We shoot to disable.
We are not all perfect shots.

"At Corcoran there are signs everywhere saying no warning shots are fired.
(Guards) fire the nonlethal methods to break (fights) up. But everyone
knows what will happen next. . . . Why don't they stop fighting when we
fire a nonlethal round? The reason is they are fighting to the death."

Fish In A Barrel

Throughout the state's 33facility correctional system, there have been 27
fatal shootings of inmates by guards since 1989 seven of them at Corcoran.

The Corcoran footage was obtained as part of the Tate civil rights lawsuit,
scheduled for trial late next year. After the plaintiff's discovery motion,
the Corrections Department turned over 187 tapes.

"These are the original tapes," says attorney Campbell. "They show that
every shooting death at Corcoran has been wrongful and illegal. They were
all tragic, unnecessary arbitrary deaths.

"Who got killed depended on who was on duty, who the gunmen was, and on bad
luck."

The footage from the San Joaquin Valley facility shows the confined
exercise space of the security housing unit, bare but for high concrete
walls topped by razor wire.

"This may not be shooting fish in the barrel," says the narrator, "but it's
close."

The four fights are brief, the longest lasting 22 seconds, says Tom Quinn,
a Fresno private investigator involved in the Tate litigation. He donated
his time writing the video's script, which was edited, also gratis, by
Darrin Navarro, a Los Angeles editor who has worked on such films as "Jade"
and "12 Angry Men."

"The crucial issue is that the gunner says he thought that there was danger
of great bodily harm there," says Quinn. But "these (shootings) were not
necessary."

None of the inmates was armed.

'The Fight Has Ended'

In comparing prison footage to the conclusions of the review boards, the
video concludes that omissions and misrepresentations occur in the official
reports. In the shooting of inmate William Martinez, for instance, the
prisoner has taken four steps from his opponent and "the fight has ended"
when he was shot, the video says.

"It is devastating to watch," says Carla Paulisich, Martinez's sister, who
was born and raised in Oakland. Convicted of armed robbery, Martinez, 30,
was fatally wounded in 1989. "He was backing up, he had stopped fighting.
"My brother was there to pay his debt and then he would come home and
hopefully be a better person. It has taken eight years for the public to
finally know what happened. I hope people will open their eyes and see
what's going on."