By any definition, it was a horrific attack. Nebraska State Penitentiary employee Max Fredrickson was stabbed multiple times with a homemade knife, doused with flammable fluid and set on fire by inmates bent on escape.

Fredrickson survived the Aug. 31, 1991, assault, and the inmates  were quickly subdued inside the prison walls by other guards. The inmates eventually received extended sentences, including stays in administrative confinement, for the incident.

On Monday, one of them, Thomas Fleming, told a federal judge that his stay in administrative confinement — from the time of the incident to January 2004 — constituted cruel and unusual punishment.

Fleming, 45, is seeking $1 million in punitive damages as well as unspecified compensatory damages from corrections officials for the more than 12 years of confinement that, he alleged in a 2003 lawsuit, left him psychologically and physically scarred.

The non-jury trial began Monday before Senior U.S. District Judge Warren Urbom.

Asked by his attorney, Sue Ellen Wall, how he stayed sane during the confinement, Fleming said, “I ain’t never figured that out … Maybe the will to live.”

In other testimony Monday, Frank Hopkins, deputy director over institutions, said administrators “wrestled” with Fleming’s placement throughout the confinement.

Corrections committees reviewed Fleming’s confinement roughly every six months during his stay in solitary.

Ultimately, Hopkins, said, officials had to weigh Fleming’s history of violence and the threat he might pose to staff and other inmates against his desire for more freedom.

“This was an extraordinary case because of the attack that took place in 1991,” Hopkins said.

“I believe he was a danger to other inmates. … To start somebody on fire, short of outright murder, I’m not aware of anything more vicious or violent.”

Responding to a question from Wall, Hopkins said he was not surprised that Fleming did not commit any assaults the last eight years of his confinement.

“The fact that there was not assaultive behavior had a lot to do, I think, with the environment,” said Hopkins, referring to the conditions of administrative confinement.

Inmates on administrative confinement spend 23 hours a day, Monday through Friday, in a cell described by Fleming as seven foot by 10 foot. They are allowed one hour on those days in a small yard defined by three high walls and a grate. The inmates are restricted to their cells on Saturdays and Sundays.

The Spartan cells consist of a concrete slab and thin mattress, sink and toilet.

Visitations and shower times are constricted, as is the chance to communicate with other prisoners or staff.

Paul Kennedy, one of Fleming’s co-conspirators, remains in administrative confinement. At the time of the 1991 incident, he was already serving a life sentence for murder and for a 1981 escape.

Richard Schwartz was released from state custody last year.

Fleming, stocky in build, with a shaved head, beard and arms covered in tattoos, testified he apologized to Fredrickson in person last year. The meeting took place through a victim-offender program.

“I apologized, expressed remorse,” said Fleming.

After the 1991 incident, he said, he saw “a lot of hate in the eyes” of prison staff.

On at least one occasion in 1992, he said, he was beaten by staff after he returned from a Lancaster County District Court hearing on the incident. On other occasions, he said, he returned to his cell to find the room torn apart.

The hatred carried over to the semi-yearly department hearings on his confinement status, Fleming said.

He called the hearings “rubber stamps” that continued his confinement, despite a good behavior record from about 1995 on.

At a 2003 hearing, an administrator who was a friend of Fredrickson called Fleming an animal.

“Calling me that, I knew I was not going to get a fair hearing,” Fleming said.

Since his release from confinement in January 2004, Fleming said, he has had difficulty trusting and being around others.

“It continues to be a challenge to me,” he said.

The confinement also seriously aggravated a knee wracked with arthritis.

Hopkins said he was disappointed by the administrator’s remark to Fleming at the 2003 hearing but noted the inmate received a follow-up hearing afterwards.

He also said Fleming’s behavior in the years shortly after the 1991 incident were a factor in his continued placement.

In 1992, Fleming stabbed a staff member with a pencil, and in 1995, he assaulted another inmate. A warning shot fired by a guard to stop the altercation ricocheted off concrete pavement and struck another inmate.

“Predicting someone’s behavior is not something (corrections professionals) have mastered,” Hopkins said. (But) past behavior is the best predictor.”

The trial was scheduled to resume this morning.

Fleming was sentenced in 1987 on three robbery counts. He was paroled in 1990 but arrested again and sentence to 15 to 30 years for armed robbery.

A Lancaster County District judge sentenced him to up to 80 years in prison for attempted first-degree murder and use of a weapon in the 1991 incident.

Fleming testified Monday he stabbed Fredrickson several times in the back with a homemade knife.

Reach Clarence Mabin at cmabin@journalstar.com or 473-7234.