News Brief — Federal Court Approves Settlement Ending Mandatory Solitary Confinement of Pennsylvania Death-Row Prisoners

NEWS (4/​9/​20) — Pennsylvania: A fed­er­al dis­trict court judge has approved a set­tle­ment of a class action chal­lenge to the con­di­tions of con­fine­ment on Pennsylvania’s death row that offi­cial­ly ends the state’s pol­i­cy of manda­to­ry incar­cer­a­tion of death-row pris­on­ers in per­ma­nent soli­tary con­fine­ment. In a 14-page Memorandum and Order, Judge John E. Jones III of the United States District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania expressed ​“absolute­ly no hes­i­tan­cy” in accept­ing the pro­posed agree­ment, which he said ​“effec­tu­ates a sweep­ing alter­ation of the class mem­bers’ con­di­tions of confinement.”

The set­tle­ment agree­ment, reached in November 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 Commonwealth’s prac­tices of sub­ject­ing death-row pris­on­ers to body cav­i­ty search­es when­ev­er they leave their cells and requir­ing 24-hour illu­mi­na­tion of the pris­on­ers’ cells. Pennsylvania had already begun imple­ment­ing some of the terms of the agree­ment in antic­i­pa­tion of its approval.