High Court Opens Door to Rape Suits by Inmates : Prisons: Ruling puts wardens on notice that they can be sued if prisoners are in danger of assault. Case puts spotlight on widespread problem.

The Supreme Court made it somewhat easier Monday for prisoners to win damages if they have been raped behind bars, ruling that prison officials can be held liable if they know an inmate is in clear danger of assault, yet do nothing to prevent it.

“Being violently assaulted in prison is simply not part of the penalty that criminal offenders pay for their offenses against society,” said Justice David H. Souter for the court. “Having incarcerated persons with demonstrated proclivities for antisocial criminal, and often violent, conduct . . . , having stripped (inmates) of virtually every means of self protection . . . , the government and its officials are not free to let the state of nature take its course.”

The 9-0 ruling reinstates a lawsuit filed by a young transsexual with decidedly “feminine characteristics” who says he was beaten and raped just days after federal officials sent him to a maximum security prison in Terre Haute, Ind.

The inmate, Dee Farmer, had been convicted of credit card fraud. His lawsuit seeking damages for alleged rape had been dismissed without a trial by two lower courts.

While Monday’s ruling is not a clear victory for the inmate, it puts state and federal wardens on notice that they can be sued if they ignore an “obvious risk” to the health and well-being of their prisoners.

The case has put a national spotlight on an apparently widespread but often ignored problem: sexual assault behind bars.

The group Stop Prisoner Rape, founded by an anti-war protester of the 1960s who was raped in a jail cell, told the justices that it estimates 290,000 inmates are sexually assaulted annually. A 1982 study of a California prison found that 14% of the inmates there had been assaulted. In the era of AIDS, a sexual assault in prison can result in a death sentence for the victim.

In a concurring opinion, Justice Harry A. Blackmun said that he hopes prison officials will “fulfill their affirmative duty” to end this “reign of terror” practiced by one group of inmates against another.

In his 25-page opinion for the court, Souter set out a middle-ground position for deciding claims from prisoners who contend their constitutional rights have been violated.

In doing so, he rejected the sharply contrasting standards set forth by the American Civil Liberties Union and the federal Bureau of Prisons.

Representing the inmate, the ACLU said that officials who fail to remedy obviously “inhumane conditions” should be held liable. Souter disagreed, saying that officials cannot be held liable if they are unaware of the problem or acted “reasonably” in trying to cope with it.

But he also rejected the contention of state and federal officials who said they should be immune except when they have “actual knowledge” that one inmate is likely to assault another. If a danger facing inmates is “longstanding, pervasive and well-documented,” top officials can be held liable even if they did not know about a specific instance, he said.

“It is enough that the (prison) official acted or failed to act despite his knowledge of a substantial risk of serious harm” to the inmate, Souter said.

In tone and substance, Monday’s opinion differs sharply from more conservative rulings on prison conditions issued in recent years.

In the 1991 case of Wilson vs. Seiter, Justice Antonin Scalia said that inmates could not win suits over prison conditions unless they could prove that an official had a “culpable state of mind.” At the time, advocates for prisoners’ rights said they feared the ruling would quash most, if not all, suits challenging the adequacy of prison conditions.

But last year, the court ruled that it could constitute “cruel and unusual punishment” to house a nonsmoking inmate with a cellmate who smoked five packs of cigarettes a day. Only Justices Scalia and Clarence Thomas dissented from that conclusion in the case of Helling vs. McKinney.

On Monday, only Thomas refused to sign Souter’s opinion (Farmer vs. Brennan, 92-7247). Instead, he reiterated his view that the 8th Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment does not cover prison conditions because only “judges or juries--but not jailers--impose punishment.”

Nonetheless, Thomas joined his eight colleagues in voting to revive the inmate’s lawsuit to give him a chance to prove that federal prisons officials knew he was in danger of being raped but still sent him to a “violent institution with a history of sexual assault.”

Advocates on both sides of the case found something to like.

Stephen Donaldson, president of Stop Prisoner Rape, applauded the ruling and said it “opens the door to class-action lawsuits seeking major changes in prison systems. This has been a problem of massive denial,” he said.

But Maryland state attorney Andrew Baida, who filed a brief on behalf of 35 states, predicted the decision will shield officials “from being exposed to exorbitant costs. If they acted in good faith, this means they will not be liable,” Baida said.