LAWSUIT ACCUSES PITCHESS OF PUTTING INMATES AT RISK.

Byline: Holly Edwards Staff Writer

LOS ANGELES - Claiming jail authorities ignored their pleas for protection amid a wave of race-related violence, three former inmates of Pitchess Detention Center are suing the Los Angeles County Sheriff's Department for injuries they suffered last year during a three-day riot at the Castaic jail complex.

In the lawsuit, former O.J. Simpson prosecutor Christopher Darden says 50 sheriff's deputies, doctors, nurses and employees of the jail violated his clients' constitutional rights through a series of ``unlawful and deliberately indifferent actions.''

The suit seeks unspecified damages for three African-American inmates injured during the race-related melee in April 2000. One inmate remains in a coma and is not expected to recover, another was left blind in one eye and a third suffers chronic pain in his hand, according to the lawsuit.

County attorneys representing the Sheriff's Department were not available for comment Tuesday.

Ahmad Burwell, 21, has been in a coma since he was beaten and stabbed by six Latino inmates, who are now being prosecuted by the District Attorney's Office's Hate Crimes Unit on charges of attempted murder, officials said.

Burwell's parents and the court-appointed guardian of his 1-year-old daughter filed the lawsuit on Burwell's behalf.

Another inmate, Rory Fontanelle, suffered a broken hand during the riot and was denied medical treatment for two weeks, according to the suit. As a result, Fontanelle's hand was broken again before it was set in a cast, the lawsuit alleges.

The third inmate, Aaron Cunningham, was struck in the face and left permanently blind in one eye, according to the suit.

Despite a 10-year history of racial strife at the jail, and the almost daily assaults of African-American inmates by Latino inmates, the suit claims that Sheriff's Department personnel failed to protect the men. The lawsuit alleges that the men were placed in 75-man dormitories that were predominately Latino.

The inmates tried to warn deputies that they were in danger, but the deputies either ignored them or laughed in their faces, according to the lawsuit.

``When (Fontanelle) asked deputies why they continued to place him in a dormitory where black inmates were outnumbered by Hispanic inmates 10 to 1, a deputy laughed and said, 'We just want to see what's going to happen next,' '' the lawsuit states. ``Another deputy stated that he wanted to see how tough the brothers really are.''

The suit further asserts that a prisonwide ``code of silence'' among deputies allowed officer misconduct to go unpunished.