• The Philadelphia Inquirer reported that a circuit court recently ruled that the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (PADOC) violated the 8th Amendment rights of Ernest Porter by holding him in solitary confinement for 33 years on death row. Porter’s death sentence was vacated in 2003, but the PADOC continued to hold him on death row. After the […]
MacArthur Justice Center
Solitary Confinement Caused “Complete Mental and Physical Collapse” of Man in Virginia Prison, Lawsuit Contends
A potentially far-reaching federal lawsuit filed last week claims that a vulnerable young man was so ravaged by his 600 days in solitary confinement at Virginia’s notorious Red Onion prison that he lost the ability to speak coherently, recognize his own mother, or understand who or where he was. The suit names as defendants not […]
Seven Days in Solitary [10/29/17]
• According to the Trentonian, James Covington, a physically and mentally disabled man held at the Doylestown detention center in Pennsylvania for unpaid fines, claims that he suffered an unprovoked racist attack when three white corrections officers picked on him for his height, called him the N-word, assaulted him to the point of breaking his […]