PALMER -- The trial of a former inmate who blames the Alaska Department of Corrections for the face-shattering punch delivered by another prisoner got underway in Palmer this week.
Both sides agree that Richard Mattox was watching the Discovery Channel at Alaska's only maximum-security prison in July 2007 when another Spring Creek Correctional Center inmate punched him in the face.
The blow broke five bones in his face, according to Mattox's lawyer. Surgeons needed more than six metal plates and 200 metal screws to repair the damage.
Before the encounter, Mattox testified Tuesday, he was threatened by his African-American roommate -- Mattox is white -- and no longer felt safe in his housing unit.
"He said, 'Back in the day, your people were killing my people,'" Mattox recalled in his testimony. The roommate said something about the Ku Klux Klan, he continued, and then told Mattox, "You and I are not going to be getting along here and one of us is leaving."
Mattox, now 54, said he repeatedly requested a transfer out of his rowdy housing unit dominated by younger prisoners before the attack happened but was never moved.
State officials say he never provided any specifics with his requests to move, so correctional officers couldn't have known the attack was coming.
If decided in the former inmate's favor, the case could redefine the responsibility correctional officers have for prisoner safety. It came to Palmer Superior Court by way of an Alaska Supreme Court decision last summer.
Mattox originally sued the Department of Corrections in 2009, claiming negligence because correctional officers turned down his housing unit transfer requests.
Palmer Superior Court Judge Vanessa White in 2011 rejected the suit, saying Mattox failed to demonstrate that he provided the state with specific threats against him.
The Alaska Supreme Court disagreed, deciding in August that Mattox's suit could go ahead because correctional officers have a "duty to protect prisoners in (their) care from all reasonably foreseeable harm," according to the August opinion.
A state attorney at the time said the Supreme Court opinion "unrealistically broadens the scope" of what actions can be considered reasonably foreseeable.
Attorneys for both sides presented opening statements this week, laying out the framework of the case for the jury.
Ben Whipple, the Palmer attorney representing Mattox, said the case boils down to three words: decency, duty and indifference.
Mattox was treated "very decently" for the most part, but the state failed in its duty to provide security against reasonably known threats, Whipple said. Prison guards also proved indifferent to his concerns, he said. "If a guard refuses to act when a person should act, that indifference can end up costing someone dearly."
Susan West, the assistant attorney general representing the Corrections Department, said the state's case revolves only around communication -- or rather, a lack of communication.
Mattox never explicitly mentioned the conversation with his roommate or other specific reasons for his request to move out of the unit, West said. That's because, she continued, Mattox wanted to move only because he wanted a "choice" housing assignment in a unit reserved for older inmates but was too young to qualify.
The state takes threats to inmate safety "very, very seriously," she said. "If Mr. Mattox never bothered to effectively communicate a threat of harm … then the DOC had no reason to separate the two men."
Mattox is the only witness for the plaintiff. West told the jury she plans to call numerous witnesses, including correctional officers and the Alaska state trooper who interviewed Mattox after he said he wanted to file criminal charges. The assailant was never charged.
Mattox seeks as-yet undisclosed damages for medical care he needed after he was released from prison but continued to suffer problems including frequent migraine headaches and neck pain from whiplash.
Mattox was serving time at Spring Creek after a conviction for felony driving under the influence and driving without a license. The jury doesn't get to hear that information, however.
The incident at the center of the case began as five inmates watched TV together. West said they were watching the "Dinotopia" miniseries.
A corrections officer monitoring inmates from an enclosed area was taking a quick restroom break, she said.
Mattox testified that he was sitting quietly on a couch with a friend named "Steve," though West said he was talking about his theory that dinosaurs died because they were poor hunters.
Suddenly, Mattox continued, a friend of his roommate later identified as Vince Wilkerson told him to "Shut the f--- up."
Mattox testified that he turned to his friend and asked whether Wilkerson was talking to him. "When I turned back around he was standing right in front of me and let me have it," he said. Blood gushed from his injuries and "it felt like bones cracking in my face."
He said he was taken, handcuffed, in a wheelchair to get help at the prison's medical unit, but ended up confined in solitary with no ice or pain medications despite a medical staffer's instructions.
The next morning, Mattox testified, he was taken to the Alaska Regional Hospital emergency room, where his facial fractures were diagnosed and surgery was scheduled. Now he lives on the Kenai Peninsula, relying on disability payments linked to an old back injury.
Mattox said before the attack he filled out two "cop-outs" -- the prison term for inmate requests to staff -- about his request to move. He said he also told two correctional officers he wanted to transfer out of his housing unit. He was told, he testified, that he needed to resolve any racial issues with his roommate and "overcrowding" was a reason he was turned down.
Mattox also said he later tried to find both requests in his prisoner file but they were gone.
West, during her opening statements, said cop-outs that don't involve prisoner safety or threats can be removed so files are not "overly cumbersome."
She also said that an officer asked Mattox if he needed protective custody but he replied that he didn't.
"He wasn't that afraid," she said.
Mattox testified that protective custody equated to solitary confinement and he didn't want that.
Judge White told the jury on Tuesday that she hopes to finish the trial by Friday, when deliberations can begin.