Boiled Prisoner Wins Case
"I was cooking," California prisoner Vaughn Dortch dramatically
recounted to millions of TV viewers of 60 Minutes in the fall, 1993. Dortch,
an African American, who at 29 was sent to Pelican Bay State Prison in Crescent
City where the ordeal occurred, was awarded almost a million dollars by
U.S. District Judge Legge. The incident was instrumental in exposing human
rights violations prevalent in today's prisons-torture and abuses that frequently
occur under the color of law and while in state custody.
In April of 1992, after suffering bouts of mental deterioration, Dortch
was taken from the VCU (Violent Control Unit) of the SHU to the prison hospital.
The guards had been ordered by the prison administration to wash fecal matter
off the prisoner, who had smeared himself repeatedly over a period of weeks.
At the prison infirmary, guards prepared a steel tub with boiling water
to 125°, then grabbed a delusional Dortch shoved him into the steaming
water, and held him there screaming for 15 minutes. When the hospital staff,
frightened off earlier by the vigilante behavior of the troop of guards,
returned to the area, guards were observed violently scrubbing the prisoner
with wire brushes. (The lead nurse testified in Madrid to hearing one of
the guards tell his superior over the telephone, "It looks like we
have us a white boy.")
Dortch later recounted that while in the tub he could smell his own meat
cooking. After being taken out of the bath, to everyone's amazement, Dortch's
skin was hanging off him in "large clumps." He suffered third
degree burns over the lower half of his body and had to subsequently undergo
skin graft treatment.
At the time that the Dortch settlement was taking shape, the same 60 Minutes
segment was being shown to presiding Federal Judge Thelton Henderson as
part of Madrid v. Gomez, a massive prisoner's lawsuit being tried against
the same high-tech prison installation. The outcome of that two-month class-action
lawsuit, under submission since November 1993, could dramatically affect
prison procedures, not only in California, but across the nation. One million
prisoners are presently behind bars in America.
State-sanctioned torture and the rampant abuse of prisoners by correctional
guards has been shown in a variety of graphic incidents in recent years
to be the prevalent state policy and correctional response towards management
of the increasing number of rebellious and mentally disturbed prisoners
in the California prison system. State torture is here.
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San Francisco, CA 94110, (415) 821-6545