Ex-prison guard testifies in harassment case

Nancy Reilly realized the odds were against her when she began her career, but she was confident she could succeed in a profession dominated mostly by men.

"Lieutenant Reilly had a dream to be warden at a Nevada prison," her lawyer Andrew Boles said Monday. "She had trouble coming up the ranks because women were new to corrections, but she had received promotions."

But Reilly isn't a warden. In fact, she isn't even a lieutenant in the prison system anymore. On Monday she was in federal court for the first day of her harassment case against the State of Nevada and two former wardens at Nevada High Desert State Prison in Indian Springs.

Reilly testified that on Oct. 3, 2002, she was called to the prison infirmary and met by a dentist, who escorted her into a private room. Inside the room was an inmate armed with a 4-inch-long scalpel.

Unarmed and without her usual security accompaniment, Reilly was horrified, she said. On her waist was a ring of keys that opened every door in the prison.

"We could have easily been taken hostage," she testified.

Prison officials say it was all just a typical security test. Reilly, who was the shift supervisor at the time of the incident, was told that her staff failed to detect the scalpel when the inmate came back inside the prison after a cigarette break in the yard.

They say the test had nothing to do with Reilly's gender; she just happened to be the supervisor on duty during the staged security breach.

"The dentist decided to do a security check," said Robert Linder, an attorney with the Attorney General's office. "She solicited an inmate helper to put a scalpel in his sock."

But Reilly said the incident occurred after a series of harassing encounters with Warden James Schomig and Associate Warden Charles McBurney, each of whom were involved in the "security test."

She believes the two men, who no longer work at the prison, retaliated against her after she applied for the position ultimately awarded to McBurney.

They ignored her requests for items such as soap for the prisoners. When she responded to emergencies, McBurney immediately showed up and excused her, Reilly said. Schomig barked that he didn't want to see her face when she was in the room with other prison staff.

During the week of the scalpel incident, McBurney and Schomig constantly called her and harassed her from a bar, she said.

Linder told the jury that McBurney and Schomig did not harass Reilly.

"She was not treated badly," he said. "They do not make people supervisors who they plan to target."

Reilly eventually resigned from the prison after her requests for transfers were denied. Physicians worried that the stress could cause a recurrence of the breast cancer she had survived just two years earlier.

Reilly is asking for unspecified damages from the emotional and physical stress she suffered.

She told jurors Monday that she believed the scalpel set-up specifically targeted her. She had started her shift at 1 p.m.; 10 minutes later, the nurse called her into the infirmary.

When she complained to McBurney about the risks of handing a prisoner a scalpel, her concerns were dismissed, she said.

A short time later, Schomig publicly derided her for her action. During a staff meeting, Schomig said Reilly "wrote a false report and that she wanted Mr. McBurney's job and he didn't want any more rumors flying around," Reilly told jurors.

The trial is scheduled to resume this morning in the courtroom of U.S. District Judge Kent Dawson. McBurney and Schomig are expected to testify.