An inmate at the State Correctional Institution Fayette who sued the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections will act as his own lawyer today as the trial begins in U.S. District Court.

Andre Jacobs, 26, formerly of Harrisburg, is alleging that prison guards confiscated and destroyed about 150 pages of legal documents in 2003 because they found out they were named in a lawsuit Mr. Jacobs was going to file.

In court filings, the Department of Corrections acknowledged taking the documents, but denied any effort to deny Mr. Jacobs his right to access the court system.

Judge Joy Flowers Conti will preside at the trial. Jury selection was yesterday.

The handwritten complaint alleges that the guards confiscated the documents from inmate Eric Lyons, who was helping Mr. Jacobs with his lawsuit, saying they were contraband. The policy is that prisoners are unable to assist each other unless they are "recognized legal aides," yet there was no policy to recognize aides.

The lawsuit states that the "DOC's policy of discouraging legally educated inmates from assisting legally uneducated inmates is designed to hinder prisoners' right to access the courts and make meaningful court filings."

The documents included a potential lawsuit that named three prison officials as defendants. Mr. Jacobs alleges that once the officials found this out, they had the documents destroyed.

Bret Grote, an investigator from the Human Rights Coalition, an advocacy group, said he plans to testify at the trial about the systemic oppression of inmates' rights to access courts.

"We have an endless series of comparable reports" to Mr. Jacobs', Mr. Grote said.

In addition to this case, Mr. Jacobs has two pending lawsuits against corrections officers for assaults, one of which is for an alleged sexual assault.