Pelican Bay’s Acting Warden Dogged by Taser Incident

Robert L. Ayers has seen Pelican Bay State Prison, the highest security lockup in California, through some difficult times.

As chief deputy warden and now acting warden, he’s watched the prison go from a rogue institution to a place of relative calm.

His supervisors in the Department of Corrections believe Ayers is the candidate best suited to lead the North Coast penitentiary into the next century, but his state Senate confirmation as warden is being challenged by Sen. Richard Polanco (D-Los Angeles), in part because of something that happened more than a decade ago.

In 1988, Ayers, then a lieutenant at another prison in Northern California, fired high-powered jolts of electricity from a Taser gun at a female inmate who refused to submit to a strip search.

Unbeknown to Ayers, inmate Angela Valdez was pregnant when he shot into her thigh and stomach. Two weeks later, she miscarried.

Valdez filed a federal civil rights lawsuit and ultimately the state paid her $322,000, including legal fees.

“I think that Tasering is an extreme [measure] for a confined inmate who is beginning to act unruly,” Polanco said. “She could have been subdued by other means.”

Polanco, chairman of a joint legislative committee on prison construction, has shared his criticism with other lawmakers and aides to Gov. Gray Davis.

Ayers, whose nomination has been put on hold by the Davis administration, said the 1988 incident shouldn’t disqualify him from running the prison, which houses 3,300 inmates, including 1,350 in a security housing unit.

“Given the same set of circumstances and the same knowledge I had, I’d make the same decision again. . . . To say it was wrong is inappropriate,” said Ayers, 52, who has met with Polanco.

No matter what happens to Ayers, Polanco’s opposition has cemented the Los Angeles lawmaker’s position as the Legislature’s chief prison watchdog. He chairs a joint legislative committee on prisons and last summer co-chaired unprecedented hearings on brutality at Corcoran State Prison.

The situation highlights how the appointment of a bureaucrat--even someone as important as the warden at Pelican Bay--can be stalled by a single lawmaker, especially during a change of administrations.

And it shows the challenge facing Davis in finding qualified wardens for the correctional system, especially at such maximum security prisons as Corcoran in the San Joaquin Valley and Pelican Bay near the logging and fishing town of Crescent City on the North Coast.

Testimony in a class-action civil rights lawsuit made it clear that in the early 1990s, brutality was not only prevalent at Pelican Bay’s Security Housing Unit, but had spilled into the general population as well.

Guards had shot and killed inmates engaged in fistfights. Inmates who defied prison rules were thrown naked into outdoor cages and left freezing in the rain.

In 1995, U.S. District Judge Thelton Henderson issued a landmark decision ordering the state to reform the prison. Even before the judge’s final decision, a new management team, including Ayers, was being installed.

In January 1998, Republican Gov. Pete Wilson tapped Ayers to be warden. The retired Army colonel’s nomination was never confirmed by the state Senate, and the new governor withdrew the nomination and is reviewing Ayers’ record.

“The governor is looking at hundreds of applications and resumes for more than 2,000 positions he needs to fill,” said Michael Bustamante, Davis’ press secretary. “At this point, Mr. Ayers is working as the acting warden and will continue to do so until the governor determines otherwise.”

Polanco’s chief complaint against Ayers involves the July 18, 1988, incident when Ayers was a lieutenant at the Northern California Correctional Facility for Women in Stockton.

According to court records and interviews, the incident began when Valdez was transferred from the Monterey County Jail to the Stockton prison.

In a holding cell at the prison, Valdez was ordered to take off a county-issued jumpsuit and submit to a search, according to court documents.

Valdez balked at changing into a prison muumuu until deputies could find a missing bag of her belongings she had carried on a prison transport bus.

At some point in the hourlong standoff, officers enlisted Ayers to size up the situation. Ayers contacted his supervisor for authorization to use the Taser to end the stalemate. Permission was granted by the prison’s chief deputy warden.

Ayers went to the holding cell where Valdez had been placed and gave her five minutes to comply, according to a court document. When Ayers returned, he repeated the order.

“As Ms. Valdez spoke, Ayers fired the Taser without warning. The Taser darts hit Ms. Valdez in the abdomen and left leg. Ms. Valdez sank to her knees,” according to a court document.

A federal court jury in Sacramento decided in Valdez’s favor in her civil rights lawsuit. But the verdict was overturned on appeal, in part because of improper instructions to the jury from the trial judge on standards for the use of force. As the case was about to be retried, Valdez settled with the state.

Meanwhile, Ayers was climbing the bureaucratic ladder in the Department of Corrections, landing at Pelican Bay as reforms sought by Judge Henderson were being implemented.

Among those reforms was creation of a new team of internal investigators at Pelican Bay. In October 1995, as the team began to track down allegations of staff misconduct, investigators ran into a buzz saw from the prison guard union.

The union’s president and vice president at Pelican Bay began to investigate the investigation.

The department would later conclude that the two union officials had engaged in “inappropriate and questionable activity” by conducting an unauthorized probe and obtaining confidential documents under the guise of union business.

Polanco cited the incident as further reason to oppose Ayers.

Though the veteran official was not the warden, Polanco said the Pelican Bay administration, which included Ayers, should have disciplined the two union officials.

“He [Ayers] was in the chain of command, and these guys weren’t reprimanded,” Polanco said.

Don Novey, president of the California Correctional Peace Officers Assn., shrugged off the complaints about the union officials, saying that the focus needs to be on Ayers’ record alone.

Novey, whose union was a major Davis backer, characterized Ayers as “a capable administrator. You really can’t put any dings on the guy,” but stopped short of endorsing his candidacy.

Corrections Director Cal Terhune strongly backs Ayers.

“Ayers was instrumental in bringing about the changes that now allow us to operate the facility in a relatively safe and humane way,” Terhune said. “I couldn’t find anyone better.”

Times staff writer Mark Arax contributed to this story.

A series of stories by reporters Mark Arax and Mark Gladstone have documented alleged brutality by guards and questionable shootings in prisons statewide. The stories are available on The Times’ Web site: https://www.latimes.com/prison