Kansas Death-Row Prisoners File Suit Challenging Conditions of Confinement

Two death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers in Kansas have filed a fed­er­al law­suit alleg­ing that the state’s pol­i­cy of auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment for death-row pris­on­ers is uncon­sti­tu­tion­al. The two pris­on­ers, Sidney Gleason and Scott Cheever, have been held in iso­la­tion for 14 and 12 years, respec­tive­ly. Seven of the ten peo­ple on Kansas’ death row have been kept in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than ten years. 

The pris­on­ers’ law­suit asserts that the prac­tice of incar­cer­at­ing all death-row pris­on­ers in auto­mat­ic, indef­i­nite soli­tary con­fine­ment ​“is extreme, debil­i­tat­ing, and inhu­mane, vio­lates con­tem­po­rary stan­dards of decen­cy, and pos­es an unrea­son­able risk of seri­ous harm to the health and safe­ty of Plaintiffs.” The suit alleges that pris­on­ers are denied ​“mean­ing­ful human con­tact for years on end.” 

The law­suit describes the con­di­tions on death row, say­ing that pris­on­ers are con­fined in cells ​“rough­ly the size of a typ­i­cal spot in a park­ing lot” for 22 to 24 hours a day. Prisoners are allowed one hour of exer­cise, alone in a small cage, four or five days a week. These exer­cise ses­sions, they say, are some­times sched­uled in the mid­dle of the night, ​“thus elim­i­nat­ing any chance of see­ing day­light.” In addi­tion, pris­on­ers are ​“allowed no oppor­tu­ni­ties to par­tic­i­pate in con­gre­gate reli­gious activ­i­ty, edu­ca­tion­al or self-improve­ment pro­grams, or any oth­er type of prison pro­gram­ming, or to hold a prison job.” Under the state’s pol­i­cy for hous­ing death-row pris­on­ers, those on death row are held in more restric­tive con­di­tions than oth­er pris­on­ers con­vict­ed of homi­cide and are iso­lat­ed in soli­tary con­fine­ment regard­less of their behavior. 

These con­di­tions, the suit claims, ​“have not only cre­at­ed a seri­ous risk of harm to their health and safe­ty, but undoubt­ed­ly have caused such harm, both psy­cho­log­i­cal and phys­i­cal, to them.” It explains that men­tal health experts, physi­cians, cor­rec­tions experts, and human rights experts all agree that pro­longed soli­tary con­fine­ment caus­es ​“severe dam­age” to human beings. 

In 2015, Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote, “[R]esearch still con­firms what this Court sug­gest­ed over a cen­tu­ry ago: Years on end of near-total iso­la­tion exact a ter­ri­ble price.” Citing stud­ies on rates of prison vio­lence, the suit argues that hold­ing death-row pris­on­ers in soli­tary con­fine­ment does noth­ing to pro­mote prison safety. 

The prac­tice of auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment for death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers is decreas­ing nation­wide as a result of a series of death-row prison con­di­tions law­suits. Since 2019, six states have sig­nif­i­cant­ly changed the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment for peo­ple on death row. Virginia, South Carolina, Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, and Oregon all end­ed auto­mat­ic soli­tary con­fine­ment for death-row pris­on­ers. Prisoners in those states have gained access to pro­grams and rights pre­vi­ous­ly reserved for gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion pris­on­ers, includ­ing edu­ca­tion­al and occu­pa­tion­al pro­grams, group reli­gious ser­vices, and con­tact vis­its with fam­i­ly mem­bers. California announced the cre­ation of a pilot pro­gram in February 2020 to allow some of the state’s death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers to move from San Quentin’s death row to gen­er­al pop­u­la­tion in oth­er max­i­mum-secu­ri­ty pris­ons that offer work and oth­er rehabilitative programs.