Judge Orders Sheriff to Give Defense Reports on Jail Riots

The Sheriff’s Department was ordered Wednesday to release internal incident reports on past jail riots to a group of defense attorneys who are representing five black inmates charged with rioting in the county’s El Cajon jail.

Superior Court Judge Michael Wellington, in issuing the order, said he will review the reports and decide how much detail from the reports should be released.

The defense attorneys requested access to the reports to show that their clients are being discriminated against because other inmates have rioted in the jails and have not been charged with crimes.

“If (the reports) shows discrimination, it will help us,” said Richard Boesen, an attorney for defendant Mark Andrews, 21. “I think the judge did what was appropriate.”

Janet Houts, an attorney for the Sheriff’s Department, said “there are number of reasons” why charges were not brought in the other incidents, such as victims who declined to prosecute and witnesses who changed their stories.

Boesen and the other defendants argued that there were six other riots during 1988 and this year in the county jails in El Cajon, Vista and the South Bay. But they said no charges were ever brought against inmates in those cases, indicating that discrimination led to the charges against their five black clients.

Their clients, all from San Diego, are being prosecuted on felony charges of rioting and possessing a deadly weapon in jail in a riot over this year’s Fourth of July weekend.