An unprecedented trial began Thursday in Marin County, where hundreds of inmates are alleging that the California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation mishandled an outbreak of COVID-19.
It was about one year ago that a group of inmates was transferred from a prison in Chino to San Quentin State Prison in order to protect them from a deadly COVID-19 outbreak.
At the time, the California Institute for Men in Chino saw the highest rates of COVID-19 of any state prison while San Quentin had yet to see a single case.
But that transfer triggered a deadly outbreak at San Quentin that lead to 2,600 cases and killed 28 inmates and one employee.
Now, 300 inmates say the prison system’s inability to protect them from the virus constitutes cruel and unusual punishment. The trial resulted after several people filed emergency petitions alleging unlawful incarceration.
The prisoners are being represented largely by the Marin County Public Defender’s Office and the San Francisco Public Defender’s Office, which says officials did not take adequate measures to quarantine sick inmates in order to stop the spread.
"We didn’t get the treatment that we should have gotten, no,” said Darren B. Williams, who was serving a life sentence under the three strikes law in San Quentin when he got sick with COVID-19.
“As soon as you found out that I was positive and my cellmate was negative, you should have taken him out of the cell, that way you keep the virus where it’s at.”
Williams has since been released due to re-sentencing laws but says at one point in the outbreak, he feared for his life.
"Last place I want to pass away at is in prison."
State officials say the original transfer was made to protect those inmates, who were considered medically vulnerable. But officials admit that mistakes were made in the process.
Williams says he watched as other inmates on death row suffer and die.
"You’re not sentenced to be hit with a virus and then it kills you, that sentence is to go through the process of the death penalty. That’s terrible. Even those people, I got compassion for everybody. They’re human beings too, regardless of what they did. They treated us like animals.”
The prisoners are suing to determine whether or not the state violated their rights and are asking for better living conditions and an end to months of lockdown.
The trial is expected to last for several weeks.
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