A Greene County man who is serving a 24-year prison sentence at the Northeast Correctional Complex in Mountain City has filed a petition in U.S. District Court here in an attempt to win release from protective custody.

In a nine-page handwritten habeas corpus petition, which was filed by mail on Sept. 14, Richard Lynn Norton, 47, formerly of Chuckey, says he has been "involuntarily confined" in protective custody since 2006 due to a rumor that a prison gang called the Aryan Brotherhood had put out a "stab on sight" threat against him while he was being held at the Northwest Correctional Complex in Tiptonville.

The report of the threat was found to be false by officials at the West Tennessee State Peniteniary in Henning, Tenn., according to Norton's petition.

However, Norton was transferred to the Northeast Correctional Complex on Aug. 6, 2007, according to his petition.

But when Norton arrived at the Northeast Correctional Complex, his petition says, he was placed back in protective custody and remains "confined to a six-by-eight-foot cell 23 to 24 hours a day."

As a result, Norton's petition says, he is denied the right to attend religous services, as well as ballfield privileges, and the right to earn sentence-reduction credits.

He also is allowed only three showers a week and is denied the right to communicate or associate with other prisoners, according to his petition.

Norton has asked the U.S. District Court to order his release from protective custody and his return to the general prison population, and that he be awarded sentence reduction credits of which he has been "maliciously deprived."

U.S. Magistrate Judge Dennis Inman ordered the U.S. District Court Clerk's office to file the petition, but directed that copies not be served on Tennessee Department of Correction personnel pending further orders from the court.

Norton was convicted by a Greene County Criminal Court jury of three counts of selling crack cocaine on April 21, 1999, and had been sentenced to 36 years in prison, another order stated. On appeal, however, the sentence was reduced by 12 years to a total of 24 years.

During Norton's 1999 sentencing hearing, then Third Judicial District Criminal Court Judge James E. Beckner took more than 20 minutes to read into the court record of the sentencing hearing Norton's history of criminal offenses, which began when he was a juvenile.

Earlier, former Assistant District Attorney General Eric Christiansen had asked the court to impose sentences at the upper end of the sentencing scale, noting that Norton had more than 30 convictions on his record.

Norton's convictions, according to Christiansen, included eight DUIs, an aggravated assault, 14 other assaults, 10 instances of resisting arrest and two jail escapes.