Attica : After 20 Years, the Bloody Prison Uprising Is Being Replayed at the Trial of Inmates’ Class-Action Suit

It was the bloodiest one-day battle on American soil since the Civil War. When the dust settled, 39 inmates and hostages were dead and more than 80 had been wounded in the nation’s most violent prison uprising.

Attica. The name summons up unforgettable images: Militant prisoners demanding better living conditions. New York Gov. Nelson Rockefeller refusing to pardon inmates who had taken over the jail. The wrenching climax, in which police snuffed out the rebellion--and innocent lives--with a barrage of rifle fire.

For those who lived through it in the late summer of 1971, Attica was a watershed, an awakening to the squalid hell of U.S. prisons. Over four days and nights, America’s attention was riveted on the maximum-security monster that had erupted in protest and became a national symbol.

Today, the memory has faded. A younger generation might only dimly remember the uprising, if at all. And when you mention it to the residents of the small town of Attica, you’ll get stony silence. Most folks here don’t like to dredge up the past. Too many ghosts. Too many traumatic memories.

“I just won’t talk about it, mister,” snaps Les Sawyer, a barber and 50-year resident. “You can’t live in the past. It’s dead and gone.”

But now, 20 years later, the ghosts are coming back to life.

In a federal courthouse in Buffalo, N.Y., lawyers representing the 1,200 prisoners who staged the uprising are demanding justice--and $2.8 billion in damages. The state of New York, they claim, deliberately used excessive force to retake the facility, brutally abused inmates after the revolt and failed to provide proper medical care for the injured.

“Attica was an unconscionable act of violence against people who offered no resistance,” argues Elizabeth Fink, one of five attorneys behind the sweeping, class-action lawsuit. “Innocent people were killed and injured for no reason, and the officials responsible for it have never been punished.”

The long-delayed trial, which began last fall before District Court Judge John T. Elfvind, has sparked intense controversy and daily headlines in the local press. Attorneys for the former state officials named in the suit--including Corrections Commissioner Russell Oswald, Attica prison Supt. Vincent Mancusi, State Police Maj. John Monahan and Deputy Attica Supt. Karl Pfeil--are incredulous that the case is being heard at all.

“I can’t believe some of the things I’ve heard in this lawsuit,” says defense attorney Joshua Effron. “They (the plaintiffs) want jurors to believe that there were 1,200 choirboys in the Attica cell yard having a Sunday school picnic. They’ll never be able to accomplish this.”

The case is also complicated by the fact that so many key participants have since died. It’s quiet these days inside the sprawling, Upstate jail, which is ringed by gray concrete walls and dotted with Fantasyland gun turrets. Whatever secrets remain from the 1971 uprising may have vanished with the sheer passage of time. Then, as now, Attica conceals more than it reveals.

“My client (Monahan) is dead,” says Effron. “His supervisor is dead. His No. 2 man is dead. His No. 3 man is dead. Oswald is dead. Rockefeller is dead. How do you get at the truth?”

One way is to let the dead speak for themselves. In a bizarre twist, attorneys for Oswald and Monahan have read--and acted out--testimony that their clients gave to investigators in 1972. They hope to convince jurors that the two officials did not act with malice. The courtroom is filled with the echoes of dead men and their accusers, and the effect is to blur past and present in a case that has put history itself on trial.

Even though he is not a defendant, for example, Rockefeller’s actions at Attica are still hotly debated. Was he merely cracking down on a threat to state authority? Or did the politically ambitious governor use the incident, as critics charge, to show his party’s right wing that he was tough on crime?

Years later, the wounds of Attica still bleed. Listen to the contrasting views of Herbert X. Blyden, one of the Muslim leaders of the jail revolt, and Mark Cunningham, whose father, a guard, was taken hostage and later killed when state troopers took back the prison:

“We’re talking about one of the great cover-ups, because none of the people responsible for this crime have ever been made accountable,” says Blyden, who has since become a boxing promoter and a local Democratic committee official. “This trial is not about money, it’s about justice.”

Cunningham, who works as a guard at Attica and also runs a bar directly across from the prison, can barely contain his anger at Blyden’s words.

“Most people here think that lawsuit is a bunch of crap,” he says. “My father was beaten, stripped naked, run through a gantlet of prisoners, beaten again and shot dead by the state. That’s what I remember about Attica.”

Few are predicting how the trial will end, except to say that the jury is expected to get the case sometime this week. But the lawsuit has an importance that goes beyond the wrangling in a federal courtroom, according to national experts on corrections policy. It’s a reminder, they say, of how little progress has been made in U.S. prison reform over 20 years.

In the wake of the Attica rebellion, America began paying more attention to prison conditions, and various states launched reforms designed to prevent future uprisings. State officials focused on the issues of overcrowding, inmates’ legal rights, educational programs and visitation needs, says Robert Ganji, executive director for the Corrections Assn. of New York. At Attica itself, an effort has been made to address many of the grievances that came to light during the uprising, according to state officials.

But these good intentions were soon overwhelmed by political pressures to build new jails and put more people in them. As a result, the U.S. prison population dramatically increased, swelling from about 500,000 in 1982 to just more than a million in 1991, according to the Sentencing Project, a prison advocacy group. And those states struggling to finance new jails have paid less attention to the living standards within them, says Ganji.

The problem is especially acute in California, which leads the nation in the number of people behind bars. State prisons now hold about 97,000 inmates, up from 22,000 10 years ago. The California Corrections Department recently projected that it may need space for 173,000 inmates by 1996.

“After all that’s been said, this country still doesn’t have much of a policy to deal with crime beyond building a jail cell and a prison,” says Ed Koren, an attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project. “We’re still warehousing people, just like they did at Attica. So what have we learned since 1971? The lawsuit in Buffalo brings it all back.”

If anything has been learned from Attica, it’s that prison officials should be more patient in trying to settle such crises. There’s no rush when it comes to avoiding bloodshed, experts say, and more recent revolts have ended without violence. In 1987, for example, Cuban prisoners who seized 89 hostages at an Atlanta federal prison surrendered after 11 days of negotiations.

Both sides in the Attica trial agree on this much: The uprising was a tragedy that could have been averted. It’s just a matter of whom to blame.

In early September, 1971, the Upstate prison was a ticking time bomb. Built to house 1,600 inmates, it had more than 2,200 men crowded into its cells. The population was 54% black, 37% Anglo and 8.7% Spanish-speaking. Most of the inmates came from inner-city ghettos, and the officers guarding them were mainly young white residents of Attica and other nearby country towns.

Today, the inmate population is about 2,100, and most of the guards at Attica are still Anglo. But a key difference is that, 20 years ago, the political unrest sweeping America also was seeping into its jails, further inflaming conditions behind bars.

Uprisings at San Quentin, the Tombs in New York City and other prisons were becoming common. Like inmates in other states, the residents of Attica were angered by cramped and filthy cells, poor food, indifferent medical care, lack of access to jailhouse legal aid and limited visitation rights.

“That place was a hellhole,” says Milton Jones, one of the inmates who staged the uprising. “It was so bad, I figured I was gonna die there one way or another. So when the troubles started, I got involved.”

The rebellion began on Thursday, Sept. 9, when officers attempted to discipline a group of inmates roughhousing in one of the cell yards. Incensed prisoners quickly overpowered some of the guards, seized 42 hostages and, in a lightning-quick action, took control of much of the prison.

Over the next four days and nights, prison officials tried to free the hostages and negotiate a settlement, but in vain. On Sept. 13 they issued an ultimatum, and prisoners responded by taking some of the hostages up on catwalks near the prison walls, holding knives to their throats. Police then took back the facility with a 15-minute barrage from rifles and shotguns.

“I remember lying on the ground and seeing lots of dead people around me,” says Jones, who had brought one of the hostages onto the catwalks just before the shooting began. “It’s a nightmare I’ve never forgotten.”

Prison officials initially said the dead hostages had been killed by the prisoners, and rumors began flying that some guards had been raped and castrated. The next day, however, embarrassed officials disclosed that all the hostages and inmates killed in the assault had been shot by law enforcement officers. They also revealed that a guard was slain by prisoners when the riot began and that three inmates had been brutally killed by other prisoners earlier in the revolt.

All told, 29 prisoners and 10 hostages died during the Sept. 13 assault itself.

The shock waves from these events have reverberated throughout the Buffalo trial. State troopers called by the defense have wept in court, recounting the trauma of the lengthy standoff and its violent conclusion. Some have broken down as they examined the gruesome photographs of slain comrades. Former hostages recalled pleading for their lives, and other witnesses voiced anger that the felons who sparked the revolt now want money from the state.

Meanwhile, former inmates have also cried on the witness stand, telling of the vicious beatings they experienced after the uprising ended. They recalled being stripped and run through a gantlet of club-wielding officers. Some said police jabbed rifle butts into the wounds of fallen prisoners, while others testified that police urinated on them and threatened them with death.

Like a dam waiting to burst, the Attica case was a long time coming. But it almost didn’t come to trial. Although a lawsuit on behalf of the prisoners was considered after the crisis ended, it was stalled by years of delays, endless legal motions and other procedural problems. The current team of lawyers for the prisoners has been pressing the case for almost 19 years.

For its part, New York began prosecuting scores of Attica inmates after the uprising, but only a handful were convicted. In 1976 former Gov. Hugh Carey pardoned all those involved in the revolt, amid findings that prosecutors had ignored evidence of police misconduct, finding fault only with the inmates.

“I’m sorry we waited so long for this (current) trial,” says Arthur Liman, a prominent New York attorney who was legal counsel for a blue-ribbon panel that investigated Attica and was highly critical of the state’s actions. “But it’s a fact that the state used excessive force. There’s a reason why this case should be heard in a civilized court of law.”

Few observers, however, would call the Attica proceedings civilized.

At times the acrimonious case has resembled the Chicago 7 conspiracy trial. On the very first day, attorneys swapped insults and a member of the plaintiff’s team called the judge a liar. Later, the judge warned one of the female attorneys not to become hysterical. The two teams openly distrust each other, refusing even to ride in the same courthouse elevator.

There are also telling stylistic differences. Most of the defense attorneys wear dark suits, talk about law and order and have private practices in Upstate New York. The plaintiffs sport flowery ties, beards and ponytails, use leftist rhetoric and hail from Brooklyn, San Francisco and Chicago.

These contrasts, however, are nothing compared to the gulf separating former inmates and prison officials. As the stormy trial winds to a close, it is unlikely that any jury verdict will bring them closer.

Even the question of how to honor Attica’s dead has sparked a bitter dispute. Outside the prison walls, a small monument has been erected with the names of the dead hostages. Blyden and other advocates suggest that, in fairness, the names of slain inmates also should be listed.

But they are bitterly opposed by town residents. Cunningham, whose father’s name is listed first on the memorial, finds it incredible that prisoners who set fire to Attica and ignited a deadly riot would be honored by history.

“That’s like saying someone who breaks into a house and kills someone should get victim’s assistance funds, because he had such a hard day,” Cunningham says. “It’s a joke. It should never happen. That’s not how to remember this place.”

After so many years, the only common ground may be on the memorial plaque itself, which contains the simple message: “Man’s inhumanity to man causes thousands to mourn.”

“I don’t have any problem with that,” says Blyden. “One way or another, everybody remembers Attica.”