Trial of accused
antigay Texas prison officials begins

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)