Pennsylvania Settles Death-Row Conditions Lawsuit, Ends Mandatory Permanent Solitary Confinement

Pennsylvania has agreed to end its pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry incar­cer­a­tion of death-row pris­on­ers in per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment. The pol­i­cy change was part of a pro­posed set­tle­ment agree­ment of a fed­er­al class action law­suit brought by a coali­tion of pris­on­ers’ rights orga­ni­za­tions on behalf of the Commonwealth’s 136 death-row pris­on­ers, most of whom are housed in the State Correctional Institution-Greene (pic­tured from Google Earth image). 

The fed­er­al set­tle­ment agree­ment, filed with the fed­er­al court on November 18, 2019, pro­vides death-row pris­on­ers with at least 42.5 hours a week out of their cells and 15-min­utes of phone access each day, and allows pris­on­ers to have con­tact vis­its, out­door exer­cise, dai­ly show­ers, group reli­gious ser­vices, jobs, and access to edu­ca­tion­al pro­grams. It also ends the degrad­ing prac­tice of sub­ject­ing death-row pris­on­ers to body cav­i­ty search­es when­ev­er they leave their cells and requir­ing 24-hour illu­mi­na­tion of the pris­on­ers’ cells.

“This set­tle­ment brings Pennsylvania out of the peno­log­i­cal dark ages and makes it a nation­al leader in treat­ing all incar­cer­at­ed per­sons humane­ly,” said Witold Walczak, legal direc­tor of the ACLU of Pennsylvania, in a statement.

The law­suit, which was filed by the nation­al ACLU, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the Pittsburgh-based Abolitionist Law Center, and two Philadelphia law firms in January 2018, chal­lenged the Commonwealth’s pol­i­cy man­dat­ing per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment for all death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers. The pris­on­ers were con­fined 22-hours per day in cells the size of a park­ing space, with lights that nev­er turned off, allowed out for a max­i­mum of two hours per day for exer­cise, and denied human con­tact with fam­i­ly mem­bers dur­ing prison visits. 

In a news release announc­ing the set­tle­ment, ACLU National Prison Project deputy direc­tor Amy Fettig described the state’s use of long-term soli­tary con­fine­ment as ​“tor­ture.” The five pris­on­ers in whose names the suit was filed had spent between 16 and 27 years each in soli­tary con­fine­ment. According to the law­suit, 80% of the state’s death-row pris­on­ers had been in soli­tary con­fine­ment for more than a decade.

The Pennsylvania set­tle­ment, which still requires approval from the court, is part of a nation­al effort to end the use of manda­to­ry soli­tary con­fine­ment for death-row pris­on­ers. In May 2019, a fed­er­al appeals court in Virginia ruled that the Commonwealth’s for­mer pol­i­cy of 23- or 24-hour per day soli­tary con­fine­ment of death-row pris­on­ers con­sti­tut­ed cru­el and unusu­al pun­ish­ment in vio­la­tion of the Eighth Amendment. Two months lat­er, in the midst of a fed­er­al law­suit chal­leng­ing its death-row con­di­tions, South Carolina end­ed its prac­tice of hous­ing death-row pris­on­ers in as much as 23-hour per day soli­tary con­fine­ment in win­dow­less cells the size of a park­ing space. In September 2019, Oklahoma end­ed its pol­i­cy of hous­ing its death-row pris­on­ers in soli­tary con­fine­ment in an under­ground facil­i­ty that civ­il rights groups had called ​“inhu­mane and oppres­sive.” The groups had threat­ened legal action if the state did not institute reforms. 

Previously, Arizona set­tled a fed­er­al death-row con­di­tions law­suit, agree­ing to end its pol­i­cy of auto­mat­i­cal­ly and indef­i­nite­ly incar­cer­at­ing death-row pris­on­ers in soli­tary con­fine­ment. Prompted by oth­er court chal­lenges, oth­er states includ­ing California, Colorado, Louisiana, Nevada, North Carolina, and Tennessee have pro­vid­ed death-sen­tenced pris­on­ers more time out of their cells and, in some cas­es, now allow them to eat meals and exer­cise with oth­er inmates, have con­tact vis­its with fam­i­ly mem­bers, and hold prison jobs.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections began to imple­ment a num­ber of the changes in death-row con­di­tions sev­er­al months ago. Bret Grote of the Abolitionist Law Center called the response to being per­mit­ted con­tact vis­its ​“beyond descrip­tion: how mean­ing­ful that was to the men in the cap­i­tal case units, some of whom have not touched a loved one for 20 to 30 years until this summer.” 

Jimmy Dennis, who spent 25 years in soli­tary con­fine­ment on the state’s death row and who was released in 2017 in a plea deal after a fed­er­al judge found he had been wrong­ful­ly con­vict­ed, empha­sized the impor­tance of the set­tle­ment. ​“I went for years with no show­er, no library, no noth­ing,” said Dennis. ​“It’s like chip­ping away at your soul on so many dif­fer­ent lev­els, and you feel like you’re lit­er­al­ly suf­fo­cat­ing in your own skin.”

Dennis told the Philadelphia Inquirer that he still attends ther­a­py twice week­ly to help deal with the symp­toms of post­trau­mat­ic stress dis­or­der from his time in soli­tary con­fine­ment. ​“There’s not a sin­gle per­son that comes from death row or soli­tary con­fine­ment that gets out and they’re unaf­fect­ed. The night­mares that you deal with while you’re there, the night­mares you deal with when you come home — it’s just an ordeal that you nev­er put behind you.” As part of the set­tle­ment, cur­rent Pennsylvania death-row pris­on­ers will be giv­en re-social­iza­tion assis­tance and men­tal and phys­i­cal heath evaluations.