Having recently prevailed in a $185,000 judgment against the state Department of Corrections, inmate Andre Jacobs is back in U.S. District Court again this week.

This time he is suing just one DOC employee: Lt. Stephen Durco. Mr. Jacobs accuses Lt. Durco of sexually assaulting and threatening him on Dec. 19, 2002, at the State Correctional Institution Greene.

Both men testified in the case before U.S. Magistrate Judge Lisa Pupo Lenihan yesterday. Mr. Jacobs rested after calling his grandmother and a forensic psychologist to testify on his behalf.

Lt. Durco denies all of the allegations against him.

Mr. Jacobs, who had been staying in the Special Management Unit, which requires inmates to remain in their cells 23 hours per day, told the seven-person jury that he had filed grievances against Lt. Durco at least twice in the past. Both were denied.

On the day in question, when the officer was supposed to be shackling Mr. Jacobs' legs to escort him to the law library, the inmate said that the man fondled and squeezed his genitals and buttocks and put him in a chokehold.

Typically, inmates are strip-searched, and then handcuffed, before they are led out of their cells to a chair in the pod, where shackles are applied. On this day, Lt. Durco told Mr. Jacobs to kneel on his bunk so he could put the shackles on.

Mr. Jacobs testified that that was an unusual process but that he cooperated.

"Once I tried to get up, he pushed me forward and grabbed me by my neck, and said, 'If you say anything, I'm going to break your [expletive] [racial epithet] neck," Mr. Jacobs told the jury.

"I didn't resist at all."

Lt. Durco then fondled him, he said.

"Were you scared the defendant might actually break your neck?" asked one of his attorneys, Rebecca E. Aten.

"Yes," Mr. Jacobs responded.

Afterward, when he was taken into the hallway, Mr. Jacobs said he called for the lieutenant on-duty and said he'd been sexually assaulted.

"I was almost hysterical," he said. "I felt violated. I felt like I wasn't human."

But, he told the jury, nothing was done. Mr. Jacobs filed a grievance for the alleged incident, and it was denied.

First institutionalized at age 7 and having spent most of his life in some kind of detention, Mr. Jacobs, 26, told the jurors that what he claims happened made him paranoid of other officers.

"Thinking everybody was out to get me," he said, his voice cracking. "I didn't trust none of them. They knew what was going on. They knew what he did, and they didn't do nothing."

Scott A. Bradley, who is representing Lt. Durco, spent much of his cross-examination mincing words with Mr. Jacobs. He referred to Mr. Jacobs' testimony when he used the word "chokehold," asking why that wasn't in the grievance.

"I said 'he wrapped his arm around my neck and grabbed me back,'" Mr. Jacobs quoted. "That's a chokehold."

"Again, you don't use that word in the grievance you filed, do you?" Mr. Bradley asked.

"No."

He then questioned the words Mr. Jacobs used to describe the alleged sexual assault. In court, he described it as "groped" or "squeezed."

"Will I find the words 'groped' or 'squeezed,' in your grievance?" Mr. Bradley asked.

"I used the word 'fondled,'" Mr. Jacobs replied.

"Does that mean the same to you as groped and squeezed?" the lawyer continued.

"Yes."

Mr. Jacobs told Mr. Bradley that Lt. Durco threatened to kill him if he reported what had happened.

"And you reported it?" the lawyer asked.

"Yes."

"And you're not dead, are you?" Mr. Bradley continued.?"Obviously," Mr. Jacobs responded.

"So, he didn't kill you, did he?"

Mr. Jacobs' attorney objected before he could answer.

During his direct examination, Lt. Durco, who began working for DOC in 1999, denied ever inappropriately touching Mr. Jacobs or threatening his life.

"If you use excessive force on an inmate you could, A) lose your job, or B) you can be persecuted … prosecuted. Sorry," the lieutenant corrected himself.

He told the jury that he applied the shackles in Mr. Jacobs' cell because the chair in the hallway wasn't there that day. Lt. Durco also said that the inmate complied completely, and that there were no problems until he led him onto the pod, where Mr. Jacobs tried to announce he'd been sexually assaulted.

"I turned, and however you want to put it, said 'Shut up,' as if to say, 'Stop lying,' " the officer said.

Lt. Durco also testified that he had no hard feelings toward Mr. Jacobs' despite whatever grievances had been filed.

But on cross-examination, the officer told another of Mr. Jacobs' attorneys, Michael Sampson, that the plaintiff is the only inmate in the man's 10-year career who had ever assaulted him, and the inmate for whom he'd written the most misconducts.

Lt. Durco remains on the stand today.