State agrees to pay $165,881 to guard who beat up inmates

Brendan Riley

Wednesday, April 14, 1999 | 1:58 a.m.

CARSON CITY -- Nevada is paying $165,881 to a former prison guard who refused legal assistance from the state when hit with a civil rights lawsuit for beating two Ely State Prison convicts.

David Rowell was convicted of battery, but won the civil rights lawsuit filed by the inmates. Prison officials say Rowell and another guard tried to beat a confession out of two inmates by slapping one repeatedly and choking the other convict and slamming his head against a wall.

The state Board of Examiners agreed Wednesday to the payment.

Rowell requested that the attorney general's office defend him in the civil suit but it was denied because his actions were "outside the course and scope" of his job and was "not performed in good faith," according to a report form the Attorney General's office.

Rowell got private counsel and ended up winning the case. While he hadn't paid out more than $300 to the lawyer, Andy Boles, the lawyer ran up a lot of hours. That led to a lawsuit filed against the state by Rowell to cover the legal fees.

At the end of a civil trial in Carson City, a jury awarded the $165,881 in fees and interest.

In other action, the Board of Examiners approved $180,000 to settle a lawsuit filed by a former prison guard who said she got hepatitis from an inmate with the disease - and now needs a liver transplant.

Terry Selbach was working at Nevada State Prison in Carson City in 1994 when a convict vomited on her hand. She said she had a cut on her hand, and the incident resulted in her contracting the hepatitis C virus.

In her lawsuit, Selbach said she wasn't properly trained in how to avoid blood-borne pathogens. Her lawyer, Pete Wetherall, said that amounted to deliberate indifference on the part of the prison system, where Selbach worked from 1988 until June 1996.