[Pnews] 6 San Quentin death row prisoners sue California for keeping them in solitary confinement for decades

[Prisoner News]

  6 inmates on San Quentin Death Row sue over time in solitary

By Bob Egelko <http://www.sfgate.com/author/bob-egelko/>


          Published 5:32 pm, Thursday, June 18, 2015

*http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/6-inmates-on-San-Quentin-Death-Row-sue-over-time-6336515.php*

A group of Death Row inmates has sued the state for keeping them in 
solitary confinement for years or even decades, locked in windowless 
cells with no phone calls or human contact. It’s treatment, they said, 
that “amounts to torture.”

The suit was filed in federal court Wednesday by six condemned 
prisoners, who said they were among about 100 inmates, out of 750 on 
Death Row, who are kept in isolation in the Adjustment Center 
<http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=bayarea&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Adjustment+Center%22> 
at San Quentin State Prison as suspected gang members or associates. The 
suit said they are held in their cells 21 to 24 hours a day, with no 
natural light, no access to education or work programs, no phone calls 
and no contact visits from family members, who must speak to them by 
phone across a glass barrier.

One of the men has been in solitary confinement for 26 years, and two 
others for more than a decade, the suit said. Condemned prisoners in 
California spend an average of nearly 25 years on Death Row while their 
cases are appealed. A federal judge cited the duration of their 
confinement, though not the conditions, in a ruling last year that 
declared the state’s death penalty unconstitutional. The state has 
appealed the ruling.

The suit is similar to a case scheduled for trial in December in federal 
court in Oakland over the solitary confinement of thousands of inmates 
in various prisons’ Security Housing Units, the maximum-security lockups 
that house prisoners suspected of gang affiliations. The San Quentin 
suit was filed separately because the adjustment center isn’t classified 
as a Security Housing Unit, although the conditions are similar, said 
Daniel Siegel 
<http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=bayarea&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Daniel+Siegel%22>, 
lawyer for the Death Row inmates.

Inmates in both cases claim their isolation violates the constitutional 
ban on cruel and unusual punishment and denies them due process of law. 
Until recently, they said, the only way out of the isolation unit was to 
become an informant. Prison officials say they now conduct case-by-case 
reviews of each inmate’s gang status or affiliations, and have released 
some inmates into the general prison population. But inmates say they 
are still kept in solitary confinement because of books they’ve read or 
cartoons found in their cells.

Siegel said release from isolation is even harder to win on Death Row. 
He said some inmates have been kept in the Adjustment Center solely 
because their capital crimes were gang-related.

Terry Thornton 
<http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=bayarea&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Terry+Thornton%22>, 
spokeswoman for the Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation 
<http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=bayarea&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22Department+of+Corrections+and+Rehabilitation%22>, 
said officials haven’t seen the suit and can’t comment on it. But she 
said no inmates are held in the cells for 24 hours a day, because 
they’re entitled to 10 hours a week in the prison exercise yard.

/

Bob Egelko is a San Francisco Chronicle 
<http://www.sfgate.com/search/?action=search&channel=bayarea&inlineLink=1&searchindex=gsa&query=%22San+Francisco+Chronicle%22> 
staff writer. E-mail: begelko at sfchronicle.com 
<mailto:begelko at sfchronicle.com> Twitter: @egelko

/
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