Jury’s Verdict Shocks State Prison System

In a blow against the use of deadly force in the state’s prisons, a federal court jury awarded more than $2.3 million in damages Monday--most of it against California’s former prison system director--for the fatal shooting of an inmate by a San Quentin guard.

The 10-member jury found unanimously that convicted murderer Mark Adams, killed while fighting with another prisoner in March 1994, was the victim not only of a bullet gone astray but of what attorneys called a negligent state policy on lethal force in prisons.

Lawyers for Adams’ estate said California was the only state that allowed guards to use guns with live ammunition to break up fights between prisoners. State lawyers said gunfire was allowed if a guard believed that an inmate was in danger of death or serious injury.

Jurors awarded $191,000 against the guard, Timothy S. Reynolds; $450,500 against the San Quentin warden, Arthur Calderon; and $1.66 million against James Gomez, then the director of the state Department of Corrections. Most of the award against Calderon and Gomez was for punitive damages.

“They were the ones who knew the policies and didn’t do anything about it,” jury foreman Robert Resner told reporters. Resner, a San Francisco attorney, said those policies included arming guards with guns inside the prison and not using less lethal methods of force, including the batons held by nearby guards who failed to enter the yard.

“I think we’ve sent the department a message with this verdict that they’re not to break up fistfights with guns,” said Leroy Lounibos, a lawyer for Adams’ estate.

Deputy Atty. Gen. Susan King, the state’s lawyer, declined comment.

Gomez, now a high-ranking official with the state Public Employees Retirement System, referred questions to the Department of Corrections, where officials were stunned by the verdict.

“We are shocked by the verdict and based on the facts available we disagree with it,” said department spokeswoman Margo Bach. “We are troubled by the punitive damages assessed against two outstanding correctional administrators. We are exploring every legal option available.”

The judgment is the most recent in a string of setbacks for the Department of Corrections and its controversial shooting policy. The Times reported in October that since late 1994, guards in California have killed 12 inmates and wounded 32 others engaged in fistfights and melees. The practice is unheard of in all other states.

Days after The Times’ report, state corrections officials announced that they were revising the policy to sharply restrict the use of deadly force.

Last month, the state agreed to a pretrial settlement of $825,000 in the 1994 shooting death of inmate Preston Tate, who was mistakenly killed by a bullet intended for his rival during a recreation yard fight at Corcoran State Prison.

The Tate case led to a FBI probe at Corcoran and a federal indictment this year of eight officers accused of setting up fights for “amusement and blood sport.”

Then, last Wednesday, the corrections department disclosed that an independent panel concluded that two dozen fatal and serious shootings of inmates at Corcoran were not justified.

Monday’s verdict should “once and for all answer any questions about the prison system’s shooting policy,” said Steve Fama of the Prison Law Office in San Francisco.

Adams, who died a few weeks short of his 31st birthday, was 16 when he killed another teenager, Michael Ridenour of Carpinteria, during an attempted robbery in Modesto in 1979.

Adams fled the state, and Ridenour’s uncles, who were in law enforcement, spent two years helping track him down. Adams was eventually found, tried as an adult and sentenced to life with the possibility of parole.

Seven years later, he gained national attention when he escaped from San Quentin, a rare event in the history of the high-security prison. He hid in the San Rafael home of Elsie Diaz, a prison work supervisor, then went with her to her native Puerto Rico, where they were married.

He took another name, got a supervisor’s job at General Electric and became active in his church, his lawyer told the jury. When the FBI tracked him down in 1993 after tips from viewers of the “America’s Most Wanted” television show, hundreds of supporters pleaded unsuccessfully with the governor not to extradite him to California, his lawyer said.

Adams told San Juan, Puerto Rico papers that he would be killed soon after his arrival at San Quentin, a prediction he restated to his mother the day before his death.

On the day of his death in 1994, he entered an exercise yard and immediately charged prisoner Paul Green and started punching him. Adams’ lawyers said he feared an attack by Green and another inmate.

Reynolds, a trained marksman, said he saw Green apparently helpless and in danger, shouted to Adams to get down, fired two warning shots, then fired at Adams’ leg from 25 yards away. Adams moved suddenly and was hit in the back of the head, Reynolds said.

King, the state’s lawyer, told jurors during closing arguments that the shooting was “a terrible accident, but that accident was caused by Mark Adams.” She defended the prisons’ policy on guns, saying that it has led to a reduction in prison violence.

She said Reynolds had made a good-faith effort to end Adams’ assault and was upset over his death. But a former girlfriend testified that Reynolds bragged about the shooting.