The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), together with the Abolitionist Law Center [advocacy websites], and the law firms of Kairys, Rudovsky, Messing, Feiberg & Lin LLP and Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP [firm websites] filed a class action suit [complaint, PDF] against Pennsylvania’s “unconstitutional practice of holding prisoners sentenced to death in mandatory, permanent solitary confinement,” alleging that the practice “cruelly and baselessly hold death-sentenced prisoners in permanent, degrading, and inhumane solitary confinement until their capital sentence is overturned, or they die by execution or natural causes.”

The complaint has been field on behalf of plaintiffs Anthony Reid, Ricardo Natividad, Mark Newton Spotz, Ronald Gibson and Jermont Cox, who have been held in solitary confinement while on death row for a periods ranging between 16 to 27 years. Furthermore, the complaint alleges that nearly eighty percent of the 156 prisoners currently on death row have been in solitary confinement for more than a decade with prisoners being made to spend “22-24 hours a day” in their cells alone.

The complaint also alleges that the conditions and the length of confinement in this situation “constitute an atypical and significant hardship as compared with the ordinary incidents of prison life” because of 1) the complete isolation on death row, 2) the indefinite and permanent nature of confinement, and 3) the prisoner’s inability to challenge their placement in solitary confinement.

The complaint also adds that “an actual controversy exists regarding the constitutionality of Defendants’ practices and policies regarding the automatic placement of all death-sentenced prisoners in solitary confinement,” and as such, a declaration on this issue by the court will help resolve a portion of that controversy and also guide future actions taken by the state.

Stating that the practices deprives these prisoners of their Eighth Amendment right to be free of cruel and unusual punishment and their Fourteenth Amendment [texts, PDFs] right to due process of law, the suit seeks declaratory and injunctive relief to enjoin the government from continuing the practices so as to prevent irreparable harm.

The ACLU and Abolitionist Law Center stated of the lawsuit:

Solitary confinement is psychological torture. By automatically imposing that torture on every prisoner facing a death sentence, Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections is acting as if the Eighth Amendment ban on cruel and unusual punishment doesn’t exist. … The cells that hold Pennsylvania’s prisoners with death sentences are designed to make seeing another human being just about impossible, let alone interacting with one. … Across the country, prison officials are recognizing that solitary is a tool to be used only in extreme emergencies and only for short periods of time. … It’s time for Pennsylvania to take note.