As the judge climbed the watchtower stairs in Pelican Bay prison, he heard muffled gunshots below. When he reached the top, he looked into the prison yard and saw bodies lying in the dirt. One was his law clerk, spreadeagled on the ground in his suit, alongside dozens of inmates. Guards stood over them, guns aimed.
“My clerk was thinking he’s gonna die and this is his last day on earth,” Judge Thelton Henderson recalled.
What appeared to be the taming of a riot was actually an audacious performance, staged by the guards to impress upon the judge that prison was a dangerous place, best left alone by meddling outsiders.
[For more on this story by ABBIE VANSICKLE, go to https://www.themarshallproject...8/04/23/the-catalyst]
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