Conditions of Confinement

Since the inception of Luisâ incarceration, the conditions and treatment by guards has been one of extreme oppression, restrictions, and cruel and illegal actions against him. The emotional and psychological warfare which prison officials have continuously imposed upon Luis seem almost unbelievable, except there is all true and extensive proof that substantiates these facts. 

The following is a general outline:
- Upon the date of Rodriguez´ placement in San Quentin Prison, June 6, 1981, prison guards seized his legal work, never returning all of such papers.
- Between 1981-1987, prison officials continuously harassed Luis and his fiancé, eventually destroying their relationship with false disciplinary reports to prevent them from visiting.
- In 1984, on two occasions, guards incited inmates to attack Luis. Both incidents resulted in serious injuries.
During the second attack, Luis was stabbed and then shot by guards. These assualts occurred as a result of guards soliciting inmates-agents to conduct the attacks so that guards could shoot and kill Luis or the prisoners could stab him. All of the involved inmates were either eventually killed or revealed as police agents and put into protective custody.
- In 1987, prison guards seized three boxes of Luis' legal files and never returned them.
- Throughout the past eighteen years, prison officials have, on numerous occasions, falsified disciplinary reports against Luis to keep him in the lock-up units for years at a time in attempts to retaliate and to break his spirit and mind with the harshest of treatments.
- Among other retalitory property abuses, prison officials have periodically broken Luis' television, one of his only sources of entertainment and connection with the outside world.
- Prison officials periodically steal items of Luis' properties, damage them, or say that they lost them.
- Because Luis has continuously pursued legal efforts as a 'jailhouse lawyer', filing suits in court for other prisoners and himself, guards have often confiscated his legal papers, to have them 'disappear', or when submitting his legal papers to the prison law library, they also ´disappear´.
- In 1989, when Luis was first sentenced to life, prison officials immediately retaliated by placing Luis in isolation lock-up where he was forced to remain until 1994.
- In further retaliation, prison officals sent Luis to Pelican Bay State Prison S.H.U. Isolation-lock-up-sensory deprivation for two years.
- When sent to the Pelican Bay State Prison Lock-up (SHU), prison officials forced him to double cell with a prisoner who they knew had tubercleosis and who had been complaining of a T.B. relapse. Luis became infected with the T.B. virus in 1992. When Luis was placed on T.B. medications, prison officials periodically disrupted his medications, possibly creating an incurable T.B. virus in Luis' body.
- Luis was diagnosed as suffering from ´post-tramatic stress disorders´ in 1992 and should have never been forced to double cell which extremely exacerbates his condition. Prison officials continuously make attempts and threats to take away Luis' single-cell status. His stress disorder has been diagnosed as having resulted from his experiences on Death Row and while in the Pelican Bay State Prison SHU Lock-up.
- Prison officials in Pelican Bay Prison, in a retaliatory effort (1996) have recently seized appproximately 35 boxes of Luis' legal files and for the past several months have refused Luis access to his legal files. In the process, ´several boxes´ of his files have ´disappeared´ along with numerous valuable items of his personal properties.
- Prison officials continue to take extreme measures to stop Luis from pursuing legal complaints to the courts which will expose their corruption. 

Luis was released from the Pelican Bay SHU and placed into the privileged mainline population where he quickly became involved with the Native American religious group and was soon voted into the secretary position and eventually the honored position as ´pipe keeper´. However, when Luis discovered and exposed priosn official's illegal obstructions to the native American religious practices, he was retaliated against with a transfer to a different part of Pelican Bay but had effectively been removed as secretary and ´pipe keeper´ by being placed in an entirely seperate part if the prison and eventually placed back into the SHU lock-up on the false and exaggerated reports of guards using their false informants. 
Luis was effectively sentenced to the lock-up but gained his freedom through proving the reports false and exaggerated, but it took him six months of filing piles of paperwork.
Luis continues to be held in Pelican Bay State Prison regardless of his numerous and continuous requests over the past five years for a transfere to a prison closer to his family and where his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder problems could be treated. 

In July 1998, in the middle of a violent war between the « Northern Mexican» and the 
« Southern Mexican » prison gangs, Luis' prison counsellor, Mr.Jaquot, arbitrarily changed his facility indentification from « Native American » to « Southern Mexican » in an attempt to identify Luis with the gang and endanger his life. Two prisoners were stabbed by Southern Mexicans during a riot and the whole group including Luis (who had nothing to do with the incident) was placed in lockdown status. Today (June 99), 11 months later, Luis is the only one still in lockdown.

Since July 98 Luis has been forced to remain in his cell 24 hours a day, with no outdoor exercise, no phone access, his mail being constently searched and often « lost » by the prison staff...  
The extreme stress under which Luis has been forced to live for almost a year has contributed to considerably deteriorate his physical and mental health.

After numerous and continuous requests over the past eight years for a transfer to a prison closer to his family and where his Post Traumatic Stress Disorders could be treated, Luis V. Rodriguez was at last transferred, on April 20th 2000, to Mule Creek prison, a medium security institution, located near Sacramento.