Blood in the Water

by Thompson, Heather Ann

  Telesca was a bit incredulous that here he was, this many years later, still trying to get the state of New York to do the right thing. Couldn’t the attorney general’s office understand what was so obvious to him, which was that these prisoners just weren’t going to give up? He knew well that the defendants had spent decades dragging their feet, undoubtedly hoping that because of sheer “lack of momentum it would just go away,” but how could they not grasp that this would never happen?2 The damage awards were, in his view, “so high,” and the state could probably have settled for a lot less.3 Now, this number was out there. Everyone knew what an upstate jury had thought these men’s pain and suffering was worth. Now what number would they have to agree to?

  Knowing that he had a tough task in front of him, Telesca decided just to start knocking on doors and hope that someone would start talking settlement with him. In his mind, the state might agree to a figure of $15 million. He wasn’t quite sure why this number stuck in his head, other than that it was still a lot of money for the state to pay out, but it was a lot less than the two juries had said they should pay. In his view, even $15 million was low when one considered “the horrendous injuries here, horrendous treatment.”4 As he tried to make clear to his counterparts in the governor’s office, the Attica case was “the pure definition of what the court had in mind in Estelle v. Gamble”—the famous ruling that applied Eighth Amendment protections against cruel and unusual punishment to prisoners.5

  Deep down Telesca wondered if getting this case back in his hands was exactly what state officials had been hoping for when they appealed the damage awards. “We’ll reverse it, make sure Telesca gets it, and he’ll wrap this thing up.”6 In short, getting him involved could prove to be “the cheapest way out of it” for the state.7

  If the Attica plaintiffs were devastated by this decision, Judge Elfvin was made livid by it. “When they ripped the case away from me,” the judge recalled, “I angrily took down the photo of Attica I had always had on my wall” and threw it away.8 True, Elfvin had been the judge on this case since January of 1975 and, for that reason, he had come to feel proprietary about it. He had never liked the idea of settling the case, and had always felt that he should oversee its legal journey. Indeed, he had, in his own words, very much enjoyed the Attica trials and all of the back-and-forths he had engaged in with the plaintiffs’ team in particular.9 Although he thought that Joe Heath “was a jerk” and that “Deutsch was a very heated individual,” he had actually liked Liz Fink and got a kick out of what he considered “sparring” with her.10 That it was just so much sport to him was clear. As Elfvin noted, it disappointed him whenever he would erect some sort of obstacle to trying the case if Fink then didn’t push back at him in the way he had hoped “to get things moving.”11

  Although the decision of the Second Circuit made him “very angry” because they had called him out and he thought that their reasoning was “stupid,” Elfvin hoped still to be part of the next phase of resolving the case—whatever that should be.12 At least theoretically the cases could still be retried and he could still oversee them. But that didn’t happen. As he recalled, “nobody talked to me…I heard nothing, I got angry, and shipped everything off. I was done with it.”13 And, from then on, Attica left “a sour taste” in Elfvin’s mouth.14

  Meanwhile Judge Telesca also felt that he was getting stonewalled—in his case by Governor George Pataki’s office. Indeed the first offer he received from the higher-ups was a mere $50,000.15 But he pushed and pushed. Eventually, to his delight, he managed to get the state to agree to settle with the plaintiffs in the Attica class action suit for $12 million. He was elated. No it wasn’t the $15 million he was shooting for. But it was a great deal more than the $50,000 that the state had tried to get away with. He was not, for that reason, at all apologetic when he presented it to Fink and when reporters started calling him following the formal announcement of the settlement on January 4, 2000.

  The question now loomed—how would this money be distributed? Telesca also had the power to determine this and, in a most unusual move, he decided that he would invite the many plaintiffs to come into his courtroom and, in their own words, tell him what exactly had happened to them. Not only would he be able to determine the damage awards for each of them, but, as importantly, he would be helping them get all that they had endured on the record.16 “If the state of the New York wasn’t going to offer an apology,” he remembered, “I at least wanted them to know what [trauma] they paid their money for.”17 He wouldn’t cross-examine these men, or permit others to badger them. He would just let them talk and, ultimately, Telesca recalled, “It was the most fulfilling thing I ever did.”18

  And so, for the next few months in 2000, scores of former Attica prisoners took the stand in Judge Telesca’s chambers and, one by one, told the harrowing stories of what they each had experienced in the Attica Correctional Facility in September of 1971 and for nearly thirty years thereafter. Of all the men who spoke before Telesca, Frank “Big Black” Smith struck the judge most profoundly. As he recalled it, “Frank made a very powerful witness when he testified before me. The truth of it all just resonated with him.”19 But the more stories he heard, the more deeply Telesca understood how much all of the men had truly suffered—“They all remembered the same things.”20

  Telesca found himself haunted by the scope of the abuses that took place at Attica and what he heard from one former Attica prisoner in particular. This man had, prior to the retaking, been an exceptionally good basketball player, one good enough that it seemed he had the realistic aspiration of becoming a pro basketball player upon his release. Knowing this, troopers had dragged him from his cell after rehousing him and “with the butts of their guns they crushed the tops of his feet.”21 His mangled feet healed badly, never being properly treated, and now he hobbled like a duck. It sickened Telesca that he “would never be able to give him the money he deserved,” but when he tried, apologetically, to explain, this man replied to the judge that it was all right. All he had wanted really to do was to “tell my story…I wanted to help my brothers.”22

  Once the stories were recorded, Telesca decided the distribution of funds. He allocated $8 million for the former prisoners and $4 million for the Attica attorneys who had, he acknowledged, funded this case wholly out of their own pockets—particularly out of Liz Fink’s pockets—for decades. The specific details of the historic settlement with the state were announced on August 31, 2000. Ultimately Telesca awarded 502 claimants settlement monies, and he divided this group into five clear-cut categories.23 The first category awarded $6,500 to each of the 260 men who “were beaten, ran the gauntlet, received physical injuries, suffered emotional distress, nightmares, etc., or experienced any combination of these occurrences.”24 The second category included 112 men who would receive $10,000 each for having “received beatings which resulted in broken bones, including broken fingers, broken ribs, loss of teeth, and continue to suffer from emotional distress.”25 Category Three, the ninety-five men who had “received gunshot wounds and/or were singled out for special treatment such as being subjected to more severe, repeated beatings which resulted in a permanent disability and continuing emotional distress,” would get $31,000 each. In the fourth category the fifteen men who had “received very severe, multiple beatings, were subjected to acts of torture, or were severely wounded by gunfire, and whose injuries were life-threatening and resulted in serious permanent disability, either physical or emotional,” would be given payments of $125,000.26 And finally, in Category Five were the twenty men named in the class who had died “as a result of gunshot wounds received during the retaking.” Each of their heirs would each receive $25,000, except those of one who would get $27,000.27

  More important than how the state’s $12 million would be distributed was Telesca’s narrative regarding how this settlement had come to be, and upon what traumas it was based. In the introduction to his lengthy settlement document, Judge Telesca told the story of the At
tica rebellion and the long legal battles for justice and accountability that followed the deadly retaking.28 As important, though, he explained the process by which he had come to know the horrific stories of the retaking. As he noted, “Approximately 200 plaintiffs chose to testify in support of their claims during the period of May through August, 2000. Approximately 160 appeared in person and gave their testimony at the Federal Courthouse in Rochester, New York.”29 These men had come, most at their own expense, from across the country—from New York, and from New Jersey, South Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Florida, and Minnesota. And Telesca had not only believed what these men told him, but felt that some of the men may actually have “understated the extent of their injuries and how those injuries affected their lives.”30

  Ultimately, the most valuable part of Telesca’s order for monetary awards was his “Final Summaries”—the appendix to the order within which he brought to life the horrors that the men at Attica had endured. As The New York Times explained it, the two-hundred-page settlement served “as a harrowing encyclopedia” of the traumas suffered during the retaking of the prison—the horrific event just shy of three decades earlier that had left scores dead or wounded, “and countless more psychologically scarred.”31

  Within Category One claims, for example, Telesca not only brought David Brosig’s heartbreaking story into the public eye, but he had also done so for scores of other victims. On May 30, 2000, one man explained in excruciating and quiet detail how, on September 13, 1971, he had been “beaten on his head, back, and legs while in D-Yard; was beaten while walking down the A-Yard steps; was beaten for not crawling fast enough while in A-Yard, and was beaten on the head, back, and legs while running the gauntlet. He sustained cuts on his legs from crawling through the glass.”32 Not only had this man not received medical attention, but “he testified that he was afraid to request medical treatment because he saw a prison doctor hitting inmates with a club.”33 And, still in 2000, he suffered terribly “from severe post-traumatic stress disorder, nightmares, flashbacks, and an inability to keep a job.”34

  Telesca not only transcribed the testimony of each man who had come into his courtroom but he made sure it would be readily available to the public. From that day forward, anyone could learn of men such as one who had been “identified as a ‘leader’ and marked with an ‘X’ on his back by correction officers.”35 As this man explained what happened then to the judge, “he was forced to strip and was placed against a wall with other ‘leaders’ and was told, ‘Don’t worry nigger, it’ll be quick and fast,’ ” whereupon he was beaten so badly that his back was permanently injured.36 They could also learn about the Attica prisoner who suffered first and second degree chemical burns, as well as lasting emotional trauma from troopers gassing him directly in his face.37 Another man, one who had only been in Attica one day before the rebellion, was cut by glass, kicked down a flight of stairs, and beaten so badly that “his right shoulder was dislocated and some of the muscles in his right shoulder were torn along with the ligaments in his upper right arm were ripped when he was forcibly lifted by his arms.”38

  The very worst tales told, however, came from the men included in Categories Three to Five. There was the man who had both of his legs riddled with buckshot and then was “beaten on his head, arms, back, and shoulders by correction officers in the A-Gauntlet.”39 Another was still haunted not only from the severe beatings he endured but also from witnessing his best friend being shot and killed. Three decades later, he had told Telesca, “I can still see [his] face every morning….I can’t function—I’ve lost my family—my friends.”40 Still another who was permanently handicapped from the abuse he received had headaches and flashbacks whenever he saw helicopters or policemen. Indeed, virtually every claimant that Judge Telesca heard from “continued to suffer from flashbacks, nightmares, avoidance and severe post-traumatic stress disorder.”41

  And how could it have been otherwise? All of the men had been tortured and the men deemed leaders were not only abused on the way through A Yard but then tortured in the Box. One man being beaten the whole way to HBZ was then “forced to climb a stairway lined with guards holding rifles, plank boards, and night sticks and was struck in the chest, back, legs, arms, feet and head. Once he made it to the top of the stairs, he was kicked so hard in the stomach that he fell down the stairs and was again forced to run the gauntlet up the stairs. He was then placed in a cell (with no mattress or water) and when he attempted to urinate, he discharged pure blood.”42 That particular man, Telesca noted, had suffered permanent damage to his kidneys, was hospitalized for fifty-six days, “and underwent four surgical procedures to correct his bladder function.”43

  The death claims in Category Five were equally poignant, since in these cases it was surviving family members who had come to tell their stories. Josh Melville, the son of the prisoner Samuel Melville, came into Telesca’s court on August 7, 2000, to speak “eloquently on behalf of his father.”44 Josh Melville gave Telesca “a series of exhibits consisting of pictures, a forensic ballistic report, and photos of his deceased father in support of his position that his father was intentionally killed by a New York State trooper,” and he firmly stated that “his father [had] stood up for injustice, protected the hostages, and was targeted for assassination.”45

  Nearly thirty years after troopers had stormed into Attica with guns blazing, Attica’s prisoner victims were able to tell just how brutally and inhumanely they been treated by the state of New York and, as importantly, their stories were believed. They had not only been able to recount the severity and depth of the torture they endured, but they had managed to get some measure of restitution for it. The sums they received were, relative to their injuries and trauma, pitifully low. But the experiences these men shared with Telesca indicated that there was no amount of money that could truly compensate for this level of emotional and physical trauma. As prisoner Howard Partridge mused quietly about his torture at Attica at the hands of a trooper, “I remember those blue eyes. I had never seen so much hatred in anyone’s eyes.”46 And, even though they had settled with the state, the state still would not admit to wrongdoing at Attica. And so what the men had gotten wasn’t justice. It wasn’t even close to justice. But it was the closest thing to justice that these men would ever get.47

  PART X

  A Final Fight

  DEANNE QUINN MILLER

  By the year 2000 Dee Quinn, the daughter of slain Attica CO William Quinn, had become Dee Quinn Miller, the mother of two young girls and a resident of Batavia, New York. Dee Quinn Miller didn’t talk about Attica often, but decades after her father’s death, this event still very much shaped who she was. Back in 1971 five-year-old Deanne Quinn had been taught that prison was a place for bad guys. Her dad had become a prison guard at nearby Attica when she was three and a half years old. He had taken this position because it paid better than his job as a social worker. Since she had been told that dangerous men were in Attica, Dee wondered if her father was scared when he went to work. She could see how nervous her mother got anytime the prison’s siren blew and how relieved she was when he finally pulled up to the house at the end of his shift.

  After September 9, 1971, Dee’s father never came home again and her life was forever changed. When news broke in January 2000 that Attica’s prisoners had just been awarded a multi-million-dollar settlement with the state, Dee Quinn Miller was outraged. She knew that many of those prisoners had been severely beaten during and after the retaking of the prison, but, as so many people she knew saw it, they deserved what they got for having started a riot. They had created the chaos that killed her father. She burned inside wondering why these prisoners were getting restitution for what they had endured at Attica, and yet not one of the former hostages or the families of the slain hostages had received even so much as an apology from the state. Dee Quinn Miller was determined to remedy this.

  53

  Family Fury

  On January 4, 2000, when Attica’s fo
rmer prisoners finally were awarded some restitution, they were elated. Many others across the country, though, could not fathom what had convinced the state of New York to agree to pay them any money.1 Perhaps no one was more stunned to hear of this settlement than Attica’s former hostages who also had somehow survived the assault on the prison, and the family members of the hostages who had been killed in the retaking. The fact that they still had received nothing from the state—no money, no apology, nothing—and had been largely ignored for the last thirty years was almost too much to take. Although he was thrilled that the prisoners finally had been heard “after 29 years of deceit, cover-up and injustice,” former Attica observer and still prominent New York Times columnist Tom Wicker summed up the surviving hostage and hostage family’s dismay when they heard of the prisoners’ settlement. As he put it in a piece he wrote, “But what about the widows and families of the inmates’ hostages who were slain that day by indiscriminate state police gunfire? So far, the State of New York has done nothing remotely adequate to compensate these forgotten victims of the bloodiest day in America since the Indian wars.”2

  For decades Attica’s surviving guards and widows had all suffered in silence—barely speaking of Attica and hoping that they could get past their ordeals. But the settlement news was like opening a long-festering wound. It was of little surprise that “many correction and State Police officials are upset by the $8 million settlement, saying it is wrong for former prisoners to receive financial benefit because of a riot that they started.”3 But the former hostages also shared this view. Although many of them had felt a kinship with the prisoner survivors, at least right after the retaking, that feeling had long since dissipated. “I don’t think [they] should get anything,” retired correction officer Gary Walker, who was one of the thirty-one hostages, told the Buffalo News. “It isn’t fair. What happened to them is a lot less than what happened to us….It’s a slap in the face to you and to me.”4 Donald Werner, whose brother and uncle were both killed by police gunfire at Attica during the retaking, felt just as Walker did. When he heard of the prisoners’ award he was shocked and angrier than he had been for years. “I’m a very, very bitter man,” he admitted to reporters.5 “It will never go away….[I] don’t think I’ve got a good night’s sleep since ’71.”6