ACLU wins solitary confinement suit; PA Dept of Corrections to operate a Capital Case Unit

On January 25, 2018, the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the ACLU’s National Prison Project, the Abolitionist Law Center, and cooperating counsel filed a federal lawsuit against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections for its policy of housing inmates sentenced to death in solitary confinement, in violation of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments of the Constitution.

This treatment -- 22-24 hours a day inside a cell about 8 feet by 12 feet -- is automatically and permanently imposed on all prisoners sentenced to death. It is not triggered by violations of prison rules or a need for protective custody, and there is no procedure for prisoners to challenge their placement in solitary. Of the 156 people sentenced to death in Pennsylvania, nearly 80 percent have spent more than a decade in this form of solitary confinement.

The Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PDOC) has agreed to operate a Capital Case Unit (CCU) “as a general population unit that exclusively houses prisoners sentenced to death.” That change in conditions is part of a settlement agreement to a lawsuit that challenged death row prisoners’ conditions of confinement.

The agreement was announced on November 18, 2019. It resolves a lawsuit brought by the ACLU in January 2018, which alleged violations of the Eighth and Fourteenth Amendments from placing death row prisoners in solitary confinement for years or decades on end.

“The use of long-term solitary confinement on anyone is torture,” said Amy Fettig, deputy director of the ACLU’s National Prison Project. “The conditions Pennsylvania’s DOC was subjecting people on death row to — spending their entire lives in a tiny, filthy cell without any normal human contact, congregate religious services, sufficient access to exercise, sunshine, the outdoors, or environmental and intellectual stimulation — weren’t just deeply unconstitutional; they were horribly inhumane.”

Under the terms of the settlement, prisoners will be allowed:

• At least 42.5 hours out-of-cell activity every week, including yard and outdoor time, law library time, congregate meal time, treatment or counseling meetings, congregate religious worship, work assignment, and phased in contact visitation;
• Permission to use the phone on a daily basis  for at least 15 minutes per usage;
• Incarcerated people will not be subjected to strip-searches, shackling, or other restraints, unless security measures are required in response to a temporary, emergent situation;
• Contact visits with family, lawyers and religious advisors; and
• Prisoners will also be allowed to purchase property available to the general population, and the frosted-over cell windows will be replaced with transparent windows. 

Resocialization assistance for individuals psychologically damaged by long periods in solitary confinement to help them in the transition to living in a general population setting, as well and physical and mental health baseline eval.

The agreement provides for attorney fees and costs to class action attorneys as determined by the district court, as well as fees for the monitoring stage of the agreement. The settlement was hailed as a monumental achievement in the fight against solitary confinement.

“Despite decades spent in inhumane isolation, our clients have organized and persevered in this historic achievement for the move went to abolish solitary confinement in Pennsylvania,” said Bret Grote, legal director of the Abolitionist Law Center. “They have set a powerful precedent for ending solitary confinement of capital case prisoners — and eventually the death penalty as a whole — across the country. We are proud to represent them.” 

See: Reid v. Wetzel, USDC, M.D. Pennsylvania, Case No. 18-CV-0176.