'Terrible Tommy' spends 27 years in solitary confinement

(CNN) -- Tommy Silverstein has been held in solitary confinement for the past 27 years, longer than anyone else in the federal prison system, his lawyers say.

He is locked up at the high-security prison in Florence, Colorado, known as Supermax. The lights are always on. Guards who slip him food through a slot in his cell door usually ignore him. A few times a week, he is permitted to exercise in the recreation room -- alone. Visits with his family and his lawyers are conducted through Plexiglas.

Silverstein's isolation is the result of an unusual no-human-contact order issued by a judge in 1983, after he murdered a guard at the federal prison in Marion, Illinois. Marion was known at the time as the most rigorous confinement in the federal prison system.

Silverstein has referred to his solitary existence as "a slow, constant peeling of the skin."

"It's almost more humane to kill someone immediately than it is to intentionally bury a man alive," he wrote in a 2008 letter to a friend.

Psychologists who have studied the effects of solitary confinement find that the lack of social interaction can cause severe anxiety and depression.

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Source: CNN.com, April 11, 2010