A Los Angeles County Jail inmate who says he was stabbed 23 times during an outbreak of racial violence five years ago can sue Sheriff Lee Baca for "deliberate indifference" to the dangerous conditions in the jail, a divided federal appeals court panel ruled Friday.

Baca knew or should have known about the unconstitutional conditions prevailing in the jail and cited by investigators in previous incidents of death or injury to inmates, former prisoner Dion Starr alleged in his complaint against the sheriff. 

The earlier incidents included five inmate-on-inmate killings during a six-month period and numerous outbreaks of racial gang violence ignored or abetted by sheriff's deputies, Starr said in appealing a federal judge's decision in 2008 that Baca was immune from prosecution

On Friday, a three-judge panel of the U.S. 9th Circuit Court of Appeals reinstated Starr's lawsuit in a 2-1 decision, saying a U.S. Supreme Court ruling protecting officials from liability for illegal actions by subordinates doesn't extend to rights violations against those in custody when the supervisor had "knowledge of and acquiescence in unconstitutional conduct."