A jury was
selected Monday in the federal civil trial of seven Texas
prison officials accused of refusing to protect a gay inmate
from being repeatedly raped while behind bars.
Attorneys questioned a pool of about 80 potential
jurors in the case filed by Roderick K. Johnson, who said
fellow inmates sexually assaulted him almost every day for a
year and a half.
The American
Civil Liberties Union sued in 2002 on behalf of Johnson, 37,
who was released from prison in 2003 and is seeking
unspecified damages against seven Texas Department of
Criminal Justice officials. Opening statements were to
begin Tuesday morning.
Last year a
federal appeals court dropped eight of the lawsuit's 15
original defendants, including the department's executive
director and the senior warden at the Allred Unit near
Wichita Falls. But the court ruled that the other
seven--two women and five men--could be sued for
discrimination based on sexual orientation. Texas Department
of Criminal Justice spokesman Mike Viesca has declined
to comment on the case.
The department
had argued before the appeals court that the prison
officials were immune from being sued for damages because
the law did not clearly establish whether their
conduct violated Johnson's rights. Johnson, a Navy
veteran, was sent to prison in 2000 after violating the
terms of his probation from a 10-year sentence in 1992 for
burglary. He said that as the abuse escalated, he
repeatedly filed complaints and talked to a prison
committee about being moved to another unit or area
safer for gay and other vulnerable inmates.
But prison
officials told him to fight the other inmates and refused to
move him until the ACLU's National Prison Project
intervened, the ACLU said. Several prisoners were
expected to testify in the civil trial. Last year a
Wichita Falls grand jury did not indict 49 prisoners Johnson
had accused of rape. (AP)