“It is inhumane, and by its design it is driving men insane. Solitary confinement makes the criminal justice system the criminal.”
These words were testimony presented to the U.S. Senate Judiciary Committee’s hearing on solitary confinement June 19, 2012, by death row exoneree #138, Anthony C. Graves. (tinyurl.com/5cs4s59y) Graves spent 18.5 years wrongfully incarcerated in Texas, most of them on death row. Like all those on death row in Texas, Graves was housed in solitary confinement.
“Death-sentenced prisoners in 12 states are automatically placed in indefinite solitary confinement, based solely on their death sentence. These prisoners spend between 21 and 24 [hours] per day in their cells, with very limited meaningful human contact. There is no possibility in any of these states for death-sentenced prisoners to have their placement reviewed, to be placed in a less restrictive custody level.” (Merel Pointier, “Cruel but not unusual: The automatic use of indefinite solitary confinement on Death Row,” Texas Journal on Civil Liberties & Civil Rights, Fall 2020)
Solitary confinement is considered cruel and unusual by international standards. The United Nations adopted rules for the treatment of prisoners in 1955; the U.N. General Assembly adopted revised rules in 2015, now known as the Mandela Rules. These rules forbid torture or other cruel, inhuman or degrading punishment or treatment. Specifically prohibited is prolonged solitary confinement without human contact for more than 15 consecutive days.
There is strong international consensus against the indefinite use of solitary, but this does not exist in the U.S. The American Correctional Association doesn’t reject the use of solitary. However, the Department of Justice rejects the prolonged use of solitary without specific penological purpose, saying prisoners should be housed in “safe and humane conditions.”
Independent international and domestic reports suggest that the U.S. is an outlier in its use of prolonged solitary confinement. In 2014, the American Civil Liberties Union published a report about the dangerous overuse of solitary in the U.S. Amnesty International found that the U.S. “stands virtually alone in the world in incarcerating thousands of prisoners in long-term or indefinite solitary confinement.”
There can be violations of the U.S. Constitution in the use of indefinite or prolonged use of solitary confinement. The 8th Amendment forbids cruel and unusual punishment. Due process and equal protection are guaranteed under the 14th Amendment.
Recently there have been challenges to the use of prolonged solitary in eight states — Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Kansas, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Carolina and Virginia. In Virginia the federal court did rule in favor of the prisoners. In six states legal challenges have resulted in significant changes to confinement conditions, including more out-of-cell time and more human contact. In Florida, the death row prisoners and the prison administration are still in mediation.
While the facts about solitary can be laid out geographically and in statistics, the real crime of indefinite solitary for those on death row is the inhumanity, the loss of sanity, the terror of mental illness.
A prisoner reveals the nightmare of solitary
In his testimony 2 years after he was released and exonerated, Anthony Graves said: “No one can begin to imagine the psychological effects isolation has on another human being. I was subjected to sleep deprivation. I would hear the clanging of metal doors throughout the night, an officer walking the runs and shining his flashlight in your eyes or an inmate kicking and screaming, because he’s losing his mind. Guys become paranoid, schizophrenic and can’t sleep because they are hearing voices. I was there when guys would attempt suicide by cutting themselves, trying to tie a sheet around their neck or overdosing on their medication. Then there were the guys that actually committed suicide.
“I will have to live with these vivid memories for the rest of my life. I would watch guys come to prison totally sane; and in three years they don’t live in the real world anymore. I know a guy who would sit in the middle of the floor, rip his sheet up, wrap it around himself and light it on fire. Another guy would go out in the recreation yard, get naked, lie down and urinate all over himself. He would take his feces and smear it all over his face as though he was in military combat. This same man was executed. On the gurney, he was babbling incoherently to the officers: ‘I demand that you release me, soldier, this is your captain speaking.’
“These were the words coming out of a man’s mouth, who was driven insane by the prison conditions, as the poison was being pumped into his arms. He was ruled competent to be executed.
“I knew guys who dropped their appeals, not because they gave up hope on their legal claims but because of the intolerable conditions. I was able to visit another inmate before he was executed. I went there to lift his spirits, and he ended up telling me that he was ready to go and that I was the one who was going to have to keep dealing with this madness. He would rather die than continue existing under such inhumane conditions.
‘Never the same person again’
“Solitary confinement does one thing, it breaks a man’s will to live, and he ends up deteriorating. He’s never the same person again. Then his mother comes to see her son sitting behind plexiglass, whom she hasn’t been able to touch in years, and she has to watch as her child deteriorates right in front of her eyes. This madness has a ripple effect. It doesn’t just affect the inmate; it also affects his family, his children, his siblings and most importantly his mother.
“I have been free for almost 2 years, and I still cry at night, because no one out here can relate to what I have gone through. I battle with feelings of loneliness. I’ve tried therapy, but it didn’t work. The therapist was crying more than me. She couldn’t believe that our system was putting men through this sort of inhumane treatment.
“I haven’t had a good night’s sleep since my release. My mind and body are having a hard time making the adjustment. I have mood swings that cause emotional breakdowns. Solitary confinement makes our criminal justice system the criminal.
“It is inhumane, and by its design it is driving men insane. I am living amongst millions of people in the world today, but most of the time I feel alone. I cry at night because of this feeling. I just want to stop feeling this way, but I haven’t been able to.”
Source: workers.org, Gloria Rubac, January 14, 2022
ACLU | A Death Before Dying: Solitary Confinement on Death Row
The following piece was originally published in July 2013
Most death row prisoners in the United States are locked alone in small cells for 22 to 24 hours a day with little human contact or interaction; reduced or no natural light; and severe constraints on visitation, including the inability to ever touch friends or loved ones.
This stark reality endures at a time when the United States’ experiment with the death penalty is at a crossroads. On one hand, in 2013, another state repealed the death penalty -- Maryland. That makes six states in the last six years -- Maryland, Connecticut, Illinois, New Mexico, New Jersey, and New York -- that have repealed the death penalty, bringing the number of states without it to 18. Today, more than half of the states have either eliminated the death penalty completely or have not executed anyone for at least 10 years. Thirty states, plus federal and military jurisdictions, have not executed anyone in at least 5 years. This steady march toward repeal seems to indicate that it is only a matter of time before the Supreme Court will declare the death penalty cruel and unusual punishment and bar its use nationwide.
But until that time, many states will continue efforts to execute, often after death-sentenced prisoners have languished in solitary confinement on death row for years and even decades. Death row prisoners are subjected to these harsh conditions not because of their conduct in prison or any demonstrated dangerousness to staff or other prisoners. They are subjected to extreme isolation due to their sentences alone.
TRAPPED IN A BROKEN SYSTEM
While many in the United States understand that part of the horror of the death penalty is living day in and day out with the threat of execution, most are unaware that the vast majority of death row prisoners also suffer under conditions of extreme isolation that compromise their physical and mental health and needlessly inflict pain and suffering.
Indeed, researchers have found that the clinical effects of extreme isolation can actually be similar to those of physical torture. For this reason, the European Committee for the Prevention of Torture and Inhuman or Degrading Treatment or Punishment found that solitary confinement conditions can amount to “inhuman and degrading treatment” and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Torture has called for a global ban on solitary confinement in excess of 15 days.
Death row prisoners spend years and years on death row for a number of reasons. The length of time is often needed for lawful appeals, but these processes are too often extended by serious breakdowns in our legal system; inadequate counsel for the poor; prosecutors’ suppression of evidence favorable to defendants; ill-advised and illegal execution protocols; and the appeals, legal challenges, and stresses on judicial resources related to these problems. All of these factors contribute to the time spent on death row.
The injustice of the death penalty system and its lack of fairness have been proven again and again as shown by the dozens of individuals -- 142 as of July2013 -- found innocent after years on death row. Scores of other defendants have been found to be illegally sentenced to death and have had their sentences, and often even their convictions, reversed by the courts.
For example, in Pennsylvania, where 202 prisoners are currently imprisoned on death row, a recent study documented 142 cases in which a jury handed down a murder conviction and death sentence but where an appellate court, finding serious legal error, later threw out the murder conviction, the death sentence, or both.
PUNISHMENT ON TOP OF PUNISHMENT
While death row prisoners fight for their lives in these failed and failing systems, they spend years and years subjected to the devastating effects of solitary confinement. Ultimately, some will “volunteer” to die rather than continue to live under such conditions. Many will be broken beyond repair ‟their minds gone before the state ever executes them. All will suffer needlessly. As policy leaders, lawyers, judges, advocates and the public struggle with how to “fix” or end the death penalty, they must also recognize that the current system inflicts a double punishment on death-sentenced prisoners which is neither required by law nor in any way mandated by the sentence imposed by the judge or jury.
This punishment is years and years spent in agonizing solitary confinement while pursuing lawful appeals.
Regardless of their stance on the death penalty, the people of the United States understand that a fair justice system must be a humane justice system. And by this measure, we are currently failing. It is time for reformers on both sides of the death penalty debate to recognize the hidden harms of solitary confinement inflicted on death row prisoners across the country.
Solitary confinement is not part of the sentence. In order to build a criminal justice system that accurately reflects our values, we must end the routine use of solitary confinement of death row prisoners.
This briefing paper offers a first critical overview of solitary confinement on death row. It explores the results of an ACLU survey of death row conditions nationwide and the legal and human implications of the death row prisoners locked in solitary confinement for years and even decades.
The data that follow are the result of a survey completed by advocates for death row prisoners and others knowledgeable about death row conditions. Adequate and reliable responses were received from 26 states.
CRAMPED AND BARE CELLS ARE THE NORM
Death row prisoners are housed alone in tiny cells, ranging from just 36 square feet to little more than 100 square feet. Most are the size of an average bathroom.
Most cells generally contain a steel bed or concrete slab, steel toilet, and small writing table.
The majority of death row prisoners eat alone in their cells, fed on trays inserted through a slot in the door.
They also receive the majority of their medical and mental health care through these slots. Face-to-face contact with another human being is rare.
Source:
ACLU, Staff, July 2013
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"One is absolutely sickened, not by the crimes that the wicked have committed,
but by the punishments that the good have inflicted." -- Oscar Wilde
