Fired U.S. Jail Guard Wins Suit

A jury awarded $500,000 in damages Thursday to a former guard at the federal detention center in downtown Los Angeles, finding that he was wrongly fired after he investigated sexual harassment claims against other officers.

Isaac A. Asberry, who was terminated after working several years at the Metropolitan Detention Center, sued the U.S. Bureau of Prisons under federal whistle-blower statutes in November 1995.

Asberry said that his supervisors sought to ruin his career after he found there was merit to a number of sexual harassment allegations leveled by female correctional officers at the detention center in 1991 and late 1992. The women charged that their male colleagues made repeated sexual advances toward them.

Citing privacy rights, Sara Robinson, the assistant U.S. attorney representing the prison bureau, declined to say how many officers were accused.

But she said two officers were demoted as a result of the claims.

Asberry did not return calls seeking comment Thursday.

His attorney, Robert Ball, said Asberry “simply broke [the] code of silence. . . . There was no evidence to support that his firing was justified.”

After the jury award was announced, Judge William D. Keller of the U.S. District Court in Los Angeles asked attorneys for both the plaintiff and government to submit briefs on whether the award should stand. Neither side would comment on whether the size of the award was proper.

Asberry was fired in November 1993 after his supervisors said he was psychologically unfit for duty.

They also said Asberry did not follow proper procedures in investigating the sexual harassment claims.

Robinson said Asberry had missed 47 days of work and was treated at a hospital for violent episodes that she said were recorded by doctors.

But according to Ball, Asberry was hospitalized because of bouts of insomnia brought on by supervisors’ retaliatory actions against him. Ball said that to punish Asberry for his investigation of the claims, his superiors would schedule him for late night shifts followed by early morning shifts.

The case was the most recent controversy embroiling officers at the detention center. In March 1996, an officer was convicted after investigators found he was smuggling drugs, computers and calculators to a white-collar criminal held at the center.

In November 1996, guard Rodney Anderson was found guilty of plotting with former Rams football player Darryl Henley to assassinate a federal judge and a former cheerleader.