January 13, 2010
U.S. court revives California inmate’s lawsuit over lockdowns
An appeals panel on Tuesday reinstated a federal civil rights lawsuit in Sacramento, ruling that a series of lockdowns primarily targeting African American inmates at a Susanville prison amounted to racial discrimination.
The lockdowns in 2002 and 2003 at High Desert State Prison followed assaults on prison staff carried out or planned by one or two black inmates.
Correctional officials at the prison "apparently believe that, without showing any linkage between the perpetrators and the prisoners subjected to the lockdown, it was enough to assume that race alone tied (them) together. … An assumption of this kind is grounded on race," a three-judge panel of the 9th U. S. Circuit Court of Appeals said in a sharply worded opinion…
LINK - SacBee.com
