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.”