Ex-Inmate's Prison Rape Claims Go To Trial

Jury selection began Monday in a civil lawsuit filed by a former Texas inmate who claims prison officials ignored his pleas for help when he was sold as a sex slave and repeatedly raped.
Attorneys were questioning a pool of about 80 potential jurors in the federal trial of Roderick Keith Johnson, a gay burglary convict who said he was raped almost every day over an 18-month period.
The ACLU sued in 2002 on behalf of Johnson, who was released from prison in 2003 and is seeking unspecified damages against seven Texas Department of Criminal Justice officials.
Last year the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans dropped eight of the 15 original defendants, including the department's executive director and the prison unit's senior warden. But the court ruled that the other seven officials could be sued for discrimination based on sexual orientation.
Texas Department of Criminal Justice spokesman Mike Viesca has declined to comment on the trial.
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 burglarizing a house in Harrison County.
He said he was raped while at the Allred Unit near Wichita Falls, and that he repeatedly pleaded to be moved to a unit or area safer for gay and other vulnerable inmates.
"I ask you to please intervene and save my life from this abuse," Johnson wrote to prison officials in letters released by the American Civil Liberties Union. "I don't want to be a sex toy to these ... inmates any longer. Please help me now!"
But prison officials told him to fight the other inmates, and they 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.
Johnson was released in late 2003 on mandatory supervision, a type of release for certain offenders when their calendar time served added to their good-time credit equals the length of their sentence.
Last year, Johnson was charged with aggravated assault with a deadly weapon after an alleged incident with his roommate in Austin, but he was not indicted.
from DentonRC.com