Lawsuit Alleges Federal Death-Row Conditions Violate U.S. Constitution and Human Rights Treaties

From [HERE] A Russian national on the U.S. federal death row has filed a civil rights lawsuit challenging the constitutionality of the federal government’s use of automatic and prolonged solitary confinement to house individuals sentenced to death. 

The class action complaint, filed January 12, 2023 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Indiana on behalf of Jurijus Kadamovas (pictured) and 37 other prisoners incarcerated on death row in the United States Penitentiary in Terre Haute, Indiana, alleges that the “severely isolating” and “unrelenting solitary confinement” to which the prisoners are subjected falls below the minimum standard prescribed by international human rights treaties for the treatment of prisoners and violates the U.S. constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment.

The lawsuit, authored by lawyers from the ACLU of Indiana and the national law firm, Faegre Drinker Biddle & Reath LLP, states that the prisoners on federal death row are automatically assigned to incarceration in the “Special Confinement Unit” (SCU), where they are held in “solitary conditions” in single cells 12 feet, 8 inches deep by 7 feet wide — roughly the size of a parking space. “Each cell contains a table and stool affixed to the floor, a metal sink/toilet unit, and a shower,” leaving even less space for movement. Once assigned to the SCU, a federal death prisoner is likely to be kept in solitary confinement “for decades.”

“It is well known that prolonged isolation and solitary confinement can cause, and predictably will cause, prisoners to suffer serious emotional and psychological injuries,” the complaint states. Bureau of Prisons personnel are “fully aware of the isolated, dangerous, and harmful conditions that exist in the SCU,” the complaint alleges, are “responsible for the conditions there, and allow[ ] them to exist and continue.” 

The prisoners seek an injunction to end automatic solitary confinement and require BOP to allow them “to be out of their cells for multiple hours a day and to engage in congregate activities.” The complaint also seeks unspecified “individual damages” for the harms experienced by the prisoners, plus attorneys’ fees. Kadamovas specifically claims to have suffered “physical, mental, and emotional injuries and harm by the isolated, dangerous, and harmful conditions that exist in the SCU.”