Grand Jury Indicts Eight for Abuses Inside State Prison

After a four-year FBI probe into civil rights violations at the Corcoran State Prison, a federal grand jury has indicted eight guards and supervisors for betraying their badges and abusing inmates, including the 1994 shooting death of one prisoner for “amusement” and “blood sport.”

Federal authorities on Thursday accused officers and superiors at the maximum-security prison of setting up fights between rival gang members and then using the fights as pretext to shoot inmates in the recreation yards.

They described the 1994 shooting death of inmate Preston Tate, a 25-year-old Los Angeles gang member, as a kind of gladiator day in which officers and their supervisors gathered in the control booth to watch for fun. “It’s going to be duck hunting season,” one of the indicted officers allegedly said.

Federal authorities said they found a conspiracy of abuse and cover-up at the prison in the San Joaquin Valley cotton fields. And at a news conference in Sacramento on Thursday, they alleged that the state Department of Corrections, rather than conducting its own thorough investigation, obstructed the federal probe into what had become the deadliest prison in America.

“The law gave these correctional officers the power to protect, but they used it instead to torment,” U.S. Atty. Paul Seave said after the indictments were unsealed. “These defendants used their authority to sponsor blood sport. In the process, they violated the civil rights of the individuals and abused their power and the public trust.”

James Maddock, the head of the FBI office in Sacramento, said it was a “sad day for law enforcement.” He praised Assistant U.S. Atty. Carl Faller and FBI agents in Fresno for persevering with the difficult investigation “despite intentional efforts on the part of some correctional and other officials to stymie, delay and obstruct.”

State officials denied that the corrections department tried to cover up problems at Corcoran or hinder the federal probe in any way. “When the FBI wanted a box load of documents, it was supplied immediately,” said Tipton Kindel, a corrections spokesman. “Anything the department could do to cooperate was done.”

Gov. Pete Wilson said he had no knowledge of any attempts by state agencies to impede the federal probe. “If it is true, obviously we would then take action of a very serious nature. [If] there has been some effort to cover up, that is intolerable and we will not tolerate it.”

Corrections officials said they too were disturbed by the allegations detailed in the indictments. “We agree with the U.S. attorney and the FBI that this kind of conduct cannot be tolerated within the prison system,” Kindel said.

Corrections’ Inner Workings

The lengthy federal probe has shed a light on the innermost workings of the state corrections department, and the indictments unsealed Thursday raise questions about a broad range of policies, including the department’s internal review of incidents involving officers’ use of deadly force against inmates.

The investigation into abuses at Corcoran is continuing, federal authorities said, with a focus on supervisors even higher in the chain of command.

Thursday’s indictments name one lieutenant, two sergeants and five officers in nine counts that include bodily injury of inmates, conspiracy to deprive inmates of their civil rights and depriving inmates of their civil rights under color of law. One officer also is charged with perjury.

Six of the eight still work for the corrections department and were placed on administrative leave with pay Thursday, state officials said. They will appear before a federal magistrate in Fresno to be arraigned within the next 10 days.

The charges focus on the fatal shooting of Tate in April 1994 and a prior incident in which officers allegedly goaded inmates from rival gangs into a fight. Four of the defendants are charged in connection with the shooting, and the other four are accused of setting up the fight. In both instances, the indictment alleges, the officers engaged in an elaborate cover-up by falsifying written reports.

“It appears that the fights were staged, and even provoked, for the amusement of correctional officers or as retribution against inmates,” said the FBI’s Maddock. “That this activity could be allowed to occur, and did occur, with the knowledge and participation of prison management personnel is particularly troubling.

“No matter how reprehensible the conduct of the people in our jails, there can never be justification to deprive someone of their rights for sake of sport.”

The indictments were long awaited by Bill Tate, the father of Preston Tate, a convicted rapist only months shy of parole when he was killed by a correctional officer firing a 9-millimeter rifle.

“This is my son talking from the grave,” he said of the indictments. “I always knew that Preston didn’t die in vain. I’d like to say a prayer to the other families who lost their loved ones on the Corcoran yards, but nothing was ever done about their deaths.”

Richard Caruso, a former Corcoran guard who initiated the federal investigation by blowing the whistle on abuse and handing over internal documents to the FBI, said he felt vindicated.

“I chose to break the code of silence and tell a story of what was happening behind the walls at Corcoran State Prison, and I was labeled a liar by the Department of Corrections,” he said.

“I did what was right and went through hell for doing it. But I always believed in the end that the FBI and U.S. attorney’s office would do the right thing.”

Two years ago, Caruso and four other officers and supervisors at the prison laid out allegations of widespread prisoner abuse in a lengthy article in The Times, their accounts bolstered by internal memos and confidential prison documents. The officers detailed how a group of rogue administrators wrested control of Corcoran from a feckless warden and turned it into one of the most brutal prisons in America.

Guards allegedly paired off rival inmates like roosters in a cock fight and then shot one of them when they disobeyed orders to stop fighting. The officers told of shackled inmates arriving by bus from other prisons and being stomped, punched and rammed into concrete walls by frenzied guards in an intimidation rite called “greet the bus.”

Prison Within Prison

All of the allegations centered on practices at Corcoran’s maximum-security housing unit known as the SHU, a kind of prison within a prison for 1,800 gang members and other inmates with disciplinary problems. An officer with two weapons--the carbine rifle and an anti-riot gun that fires nonlethal woodblocks--hovers above each of the SHU’s tiny concrete yards.

From 1989 to 1996, as a way to break SHU inmates of their gang ties, the prison sent rival groups into the same cramped space to exercise. This so-called integration policy, handed down from top corrections officials in Sacramento, was based on the premise that if gang members could learn to get along on a small scale in the SHU, they might be trusted to be released into the larger prison setting.

Critics said the integration policy ran counter to the realities of prison life. They point out that Latino, black and white inmates hardly mix on Corcoran’s main yard, which is big enough so that each rival group negotiates its own piece of turf. The SHU yard, by contrast, is half a basketball court.

The outcome was undeniable. Thousands of fights, many of them between warring Mexican gangs from Southern and Northern California, broke out.

Over a five-year period, seven inmates involved in fistfights were shot dead by officers--more fatal shootings than at any other prison in the country during the same period.

In none of the fatal shootings did the fighters carry weapons or pose “great bodily harm” to each other, according to the whistle-blowers. Such danger must be present before an officer can respond with deadly force. Each shooting was ruled justified by prison shooting review boards.

Catherine Campbell, the attorney representing the Tate family in a wrongful death lawsuit against the state, said Thursday’s charges were, in effect, an indictment of the integrated yard policy.

“The policy was doomed to fail from the beginning,” she said. “How can you mathematically balance a prison population that is 60% Hispanic, 30% black and less than 10% white?”

Instead of letting each group out to exercise with its own, she said, prison officials insisted on integration. “The officers at Corcoran couldn’t implement the policy coming down from Sacramento without violence,” Campbell said. “So they took their frustration out on the easiest targets, the inmates.”

Before the whistle-blowers went to the FBI, internal documents show, they attempted to modify the integration and shooting policies from within. They wrote memos to warden George Smith and higher-ups in Sacramento stating that SHU gunners were confused about when to fire the anti-riot gun and when to fire the rifle. Documents show that Smith and other officials denied requests for retraining or changes to policy.

At some point, officers in the unit and their supervisors began staging fights between inmates, according to the indictment. The brawls became such events that officers came from other units to witness them.

On Feb. 23, 1994, the indictment alleges, officers Timothy Dickerson, 38, Michael Gipson, 43, Raul Tavarez, 38, and Sgt. Truman Jennings, 37, purposely released a black inmate into the SHU yard with two rival Latino inmates. The defendants allegedly goaded the Latino gang members by telling them that they should keep the fights “one on one.”

“The defendants then watched the fight without acting to prevent or stop it,” the indictment states. “Afterwards, they falsified a written report to cover up the fact that they had intentionally staged the fight.”

Less than two months later, according to the charges, Lt. Douglas Martin, 54, Sgt. John Vaughn, 42, and officers Christopher Bethea, 33, and Jerry Arvizu, 30, placed Tate and his cellmate into the SHU yard with rival gang members. They did this even though they were aware that a fight was likely to occur, the indictment states.

Vaughn assigned Bethea to the gunner’s position and then summoned a female officer to come with him to the control booth to watch the fight, according to the indictment. The unnamed control booth operator then said, “It’s going to be duck hunting season.”

Aftermath of Shooting

In a videotape of the shooting captured by prison cameras, Tate and his cellmate, who are both black, are seen waiting for the charge of the two Latino gang members. The tape shows shots being fired into the brawlers by Bethea and Tate being hit in the head by a bullet intended for the aggressors.

“Following the shooting the four officers involved prepared false and misleading written reports designed to cover up the fact that they had encouraged the inmates to fight,” the indictment states.

Almost from the beginning, when Caruso went to the the FBI after the Tate killing, the case has engendered hard feelings. Federal authorities contend that prison investigators obstructed the investigation by intimidating whistle-blowers.

Last year, state corrections officials said they had finished a wide-ranging probe of alleged abuses at Corcoran and found nothing to substantiate the whistle-blowers’ accounts. They said their own probe found only isolated incidents of excessive force, which led to the firing or demotion of 13 officers and administrators.

On Thursday, however, corrections officials backtracked on those statements, saying their investigation delved into different areas than the federal probe. “Our investigation was only into some of the allegations,” Kindel said.

For the past year, in a modification of the integrated yard policy, the prison has allowed SHU inmates to choose which yard they prefer--one free of rivals or one containing members of other groups.

“Since we increased training on the integration and weapons policy, the incidents have gone way down,” Kindel said. “They are getting the right mix on the yards, and the prison seems to be operating at a much safer level.”

The employee union that represents the prison guards also put the blame on the old integrated yard policy. “Indicting individuals for simply following department policy is grossly wrong,” said Lance Corcoran, vice president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn.

Sgt. Jennings and officers Dickerson, Gipson and Tavarez are charged with four counts of civil rights violations and face 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000 in each count if convicted. Tavarez also is charged with lying to the grand jury. Lt. Martin, Sgt. Vaughn and officers Bethea and Arvizu face life terms if convicted in the Tate shooting.

Arax reported from Fresno and Gladstone from Sacramento; staff writer Carl Ingram contributed to this story.