ROANOKE TIMES
Copyright (c) 1996, Roanoke Times
DATE: Thursday, November 28, 1996 TAG: 9611290046
SECTION: VIRGINIA PAGE: C1 EDITION: HOLIDAY
SOURCE: JAN VERTEFEUILLE STAFF WRITER
A CORRECTIONAL officer erred in putting the victim in a cell with a violent inmate, the judge ruled, but the head of the Augusta Correctional Center was not liable.
A state prisoner who was raped by his cellmate may have been the victim of "poor judgment" by a correctional officer who made his cell assignment, but he does not have a claim against the warden of Augusta Correctional Center, a federal judge has ruled.
U.S. District Judge Samuel Wilson ruled that the officer who assigned William Dixon to a cell with Johnny Turner, a violent inmate, "should have known of the likelihood that Turner would eventually attack Dixon in some manner, although the sexual battery was not necessarily foreseeable."
But the cell-assignment policy itself was not "constitutionally deficient" and the warden was not proven to be "deliberately indifferent" to a risk to Dixon, Wilson ruled. Because of that, he could not find in Dixon's favor.
Dixon, 24, is serving a 15-year sentence for robbery. He reported being raped in May 1994, four nights after being assigned to share a cell with Turner.
Turner admitted having sex with Dixon, but maintained that it was consensual.
Turner had committed more than 30 major institutional violations at various prisons, including hitting and beating fellow inmates and correctional officers. He also was involved in a violent hostage-taking incident at Mecklenburg Correctional Center in 1984, according to prison officials.
Turner is serving a 70-year sentence for rape, robbery, malicious wounding, drug-related charges and several other charges.
In his ruling, Wilson noted that warden Lonnie Saunders' knowledge of the cell assignment procedures at Augusta and of Turner's record was "less than optimal." Saunders testified at a hearing this summer that he knew Turner had attacked another inmate with a baseball bat in 1993.
In an earlier affidavit in a lawsuit filed by Turner, Saunders detailed Turner's record in prison. He said Turner had been punished for sexual advances toward others, indecent exposure and assault. Turner's suit, alleging constitutional violations in the way he was punished for the rape, was dismissed last year.
In assigning inmates to cells, officers must consider an inmate's propensity for violence and sexually predatory conduct as well as an inmate's potential for becoming a victim. The officer who assigned Turner and Dixon to the same cell testified that she believed most of Turner's violence had been directed at guards rather than inmates and that he hadn't committed any offenses for several months.
Saunders, the sole defendant in Dixon's suit, was not in his office Wednesday.
Turner was convicted in a prison hearing of assaulting Dixon and was punished with 15 days in isolation and the loss of 30 days of good conduct credit.
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