MT. CLEMENS, MI - Three Macomb County Jail corrections officers began hearing from their accusers Tuesday in a civil lawsuit arising from an alleged inmate beating that failed to result in any criminal charges.

Jurors heard opening statements and testimony from the first witnesses in the lawsuit against Anthony Romita, Brian Sywak and Eric Oke before U.S. District Judge Victoria Roberts in Detroit. All three are alleged to have some role in an alleged physical attack on inmate William E. Diaz.

"I saw officer Romita punching the young man right there, Mr. Diaz," said Randall Hough, a fellow inmate with Diaz at the time. "I was scared to (talk) for retaliation, you know ... I don't know why I didn't say anything, but in jail you just learn to keep your mouth shut."

Diaz, 34, now serving time at the Mound Road Correctional Facility in Detroit, seeks damages above $75,000 in the lawsuit.

He and other inmates accuse officer Romita of roughing Diaz up in a jail cell one evening in October 2004 while colleague Brian Sywak stood watch and Eric Oke apparently assisted indirectly from a guard tower, while Diaz was jailed in late 2004 on a narcotics charge.

"The officer was touching him (Diaz, in the chest area) to move him or direct him back toward his cell during the lockdown. That's the extent of it," said Kay Rivest Butler, an attorney defending the three corrections officers in the case.

"Although, that's not the extent of it for Mr. Diaz, because he starts suddenly shouting and carrying on that 'You can't touch me, I'm going to sue, you can't touch me, I know my rights because I was in a penitentiary.'"

The case may become a credibility contest between the officers, plus some of their colleagues, versus roughly half of the inmates in the unit who corroborate all or part of Diaz's accounts.

According to lawsuit documents, records and attorneys, Diaz initiated no confrontation with the officers but may have provoked one or more of them from his cell on the eighth floor. Through a loudspeaker system connecting the jail cells to the guard tower, Diaz alleges the officers overheard him tell his "bunkie" or cellmate that if he were to meet up with Romita outside the jail environment he would "kick his ass."

That allegedly prompted Romita and Sywak to "glove up" and enter the cell later, briefly removing Diaz's cellmate, Vilius Dubard. Hough, Diaz and others allege Romita roughed up and bruised Diaz in the cell as Sywak stood guard over Dubard. Oke is accused of aiding the two men by relieving Romita in a guard tower and electronically opening an entry point to allow the two men access to Diaz.

A criminal investigation into the Diaz incident failed to result in any criminal charges against the three men, and they all retained their jobs at the jail. However, the men did face internal discipline after investigators found Oke had improperly opened an entryway, and the two men had removed a television from the unit during the same incident without documenting it.

James Langtry, chief of operations for Macomb County prosecutors, said Tuesday his office could not discuss the reasons for the decision not to prosecute the men while the lawsuit was pending. At the moment, he said, no prosecutor has been subpoenaed or contacted to appear as a witness in the case.

"Due to the fact there's pending litigation, it would be improper for our office to discuss anything about our findings, at least while that case continues," he explained.

Civil attorney Fred Gibson of Clinton Township, who represents Diaz, said his client has passed a polygraph and several inmates verify all or part of Diaz's account, even though some have admittedly changed their stories. Video camera footage from the jail unit apparently sheds little light on the allegations.

"I'd like to tell you what you would see on (the video) will be interesting, but it won't," Gibson said Tuesday. "You won't be able to see anything. And that's precisely what we are talking about in the way these three defendants acted together at the jail."

Trial proceedings are expected to last through most of the week at U.S. District Court.