Rulings for Two Death-Sentenced Prisoners Recognize Devastating Harm Caused by Solitary Confinement

Scientists and other experts are unanimous in their conclusion that indefinite or prolonged solitary confinement causes serious harm, and the United Nations says it amounts to torture—yet most death-sentenced people in America are confined to these extreme conditions of isolation and deprivation for years. As of 2020, a dozen states routinely kept death-sentenced prisoners in single cells for at least twenty-two hours a day with little-to-no human contact. Two recent developments in capital cases recognized the severe harm of these conditions. In Tennessee, Christa Pike, who had been held in functional solitary confinement for 28 years as the only woman on the state’s death row, reached a settlement with the state that would allow her to work and socialize with other women in the general prison population. And in Pennsylvania, a federal appeals court ruled that Roy Williams, who has a lifelong history of serious mental illness, could proceed with his lawsuit alleging that the state unconstitutionally subjected him to 26 years of solitary confinement in violation of the Eighth Amendment and the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). 

In Tennessee, Ms. Pike (pictured) sued the Department of Corrections in 2022, alleging that the state had kept her in de facto solitary confinement for over a quarter century. While the men on death row are allowed to socialize and work together, and another death-sentenced woman was permitted to live among the general prison population before her sentence was commuted in 2010, Ms. Pike had “no social engagement with other incarcerated individuals or prison staff, no educational or religious programming, and nearly no physical contact with another human being.” On Monday, September 16, Ms. Pike reached an agreement with the state that will give her equivalent opportunities to the men on death row, including a job, shared meals with other incarcerated women, and more time out of her cell. “For the last nearly 30 years, Ms. Pike has been subjected to solitary confinement in a cell the size of a parking space, where she has had nearly no meaningful human contact,” said Ms. Pike’s attorney Angela Bergman. “These conditions have had a devastating impact on her mental and physical health.” Ms. Bergman said that the settlement would be “life-changing” for Ms. Pike and signify “a reprieve from decades of harmful and unconstitutional conditions, [and] an opportunity to have a meaningful, positive impact on those around her.”

In Pennsylvania, Mr. Williams sued the Department of Corrections (DOC) for holding him in near-constant solitary confinement from 1993 to 2019 despite his history of serious mental illness. (Pennsylvania only ended its mandatory solitary confinement policy in 2019 in response to a successful class action lawsuit; at least four other states have ended their equivalent policies in response to lawsuits.) Mr. Williams argued that the state violated the Eighth Amendment’s ban on cruel and unusual punishment and the ADA’s protections against discrimination for individuals with disabilities. A federal district court dismissed Mr. Williams’ claims, holding that the DOC held qualified immunity and Mr. Williams could not show that the state exhibited “deliberate indifference” to his disability.

However, on Friday, September 20, the Third Circuit Court of Appeals overturned the district court and held that Mr. Williams’ claims could proceed. “[I]ndividuals with a known history of serious mental illness have a clearly established right not to be subjected to prolonged, indefinite solitary confinement—without penological justification—by an official who was aware of that history and the risks that solitary confinement pose to someone with those health conditions,” the court wrote. The court cited Mr. Williams’ records of suicidal ideation, depression, and mental health hospitalizations going back to 1979, when he was 14 years old. He was diagnosed with a psychiatric disability in 1994 and placed on the DOC’s Mental Health Roster, and experts later concluded that he was “severely psychologically, cognitively, and emotionally impaired.”

The court strongly rebuked the state’s arguments in the case, as well as its solitary confinement policies, which were extensively documented in a scathing 2014 investigation by the U.S. Department of Justice (DOJ). The DOJ found that Pennsylvania held death-sentenced prisoners in 7- by 12-foot cells around the clock and barred them from basic education courses, vocational opportunities, and group religious services. There was no natural light in the cells, but the artificial lights were kept on all night, and the lack of ventilation meant the unit often smelled of human feces. Officials punished prisoners who exhibited symptoms of mental illness by denying them running water and bedding, taking away their clothes, and placing them in full-body restraints for more than seven hours at a time. The DOJ concluded that the Pennsylvania DOC’s use of solitary confinement for people with serious mental illness violated both the Eighth Amendment and the ADA. Citing these findings, the Third Circuit wrote that Pennsylvania’s “blanket policy of keeping people with known preexisting serious mental illness in solitary confinement solely because they were sentenced to death, even in the absence of an active death warrant, amounted to ‘foul’ and ‘inhuman’ conditions of confinement…without penological justification, a classic Eighth Amendment violation.” 

The court also emphasized that “solitary confinement can ‘cause cognitive disturbances’ after ‘even a few days’ in a person without a preexisting mental illness; obviously, such prolonged confinement is particularly cruel for a person with ‘severely compromised mental health.’” Both Mr. Williams and Ms. Pike suffer from organic brain damage and psychiatric disorders that experts say make them particularly vulnerable to the conditions of solitary confinement. Ms. Pike was exposed to alcohol in utero, which can have disastrous effects on the developing brain, then faced “abuse, neglect, multiple violent rapes, and…severe mental illness” in childhood. Mr. Williams had already experienced serious mental illness symptoms for half his life before entering Pennsylvania custody, and attempted suicide on death row. The Third Circuit’s ruling tracks the UN’s recommendation that any use of solitary confinement “should be prohibited in the case of prisoners with mental or physical disabilities when their conditions would be exacerbated by such measures.”