Mark Adams was killed at San Quentin State Prison on March 7, 1994, when Correctional Officer Timothy Scott Reynolds fired three shots from a guard tower into the segregation unit exercise yard during a fistfight between inmates. One bullet struck Adams in the back of the head. The shooting occurred under a California Department of Corrections policy that permitted firing into unarmed prisoner fights to break them up.

A federal jury in U.S. District Court in San Francisco later found Reynolds had used excessive force and awarded more than $2.3 million in damages to Adams’ family, dividing liability among Reynolds, then-Warden Arthur Calderon, and former Director James Gomez. Testimony during the trial included claims that Reynolds had bragged about the shooting. The case highlighted a pattern of deadly force in California prisons between 1989 and 1994 and prompted the Department of Corrections to announce revisions to its shooting policy.

Does anyone have additional details about the conditions in San Quentin’s segregation yard that day or can add firsthand information about how the policy was implemented at the time?