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Page Number: 70

20 

GLOSSIP v. GROSS 

BREYER, J., dissenting 

for  22  or  more  hours  per  day.  American  Civil  Liberties 
Union  (ACLU),  A  Death  Before  Dying:  Solitary  Confine­
ment  on  Death  Row  5  (July  2013)  (ACLU  Report).    This 
occurs even though the ABA has suggested that death row 
inmates  be  housed  in  conditions  similar  to  the  general
population, and the United Nations Special Rapporteur on
Torture has called for a global ban on solitary confinement 
longer  than  15  days.  See  id.,  at  2,  4;  ABA  Standards  for 
Criminal  Justice:  Treatment  of  Prisoners  6  (3d  ed.  2011).
And  it  is  well  documented  that  such  prolonged  solitary 
confinement  produces  numerous  deleterious  harms.    See, 
e.g.,  Haney,  Mental  Health  Issues  in  Long-Term  Solitary 
and  “Supermax”  Confinement,  49  Crime  &  Delinquency 
124,  130  (2003)  (cataloguing  studies  finding  that  solitary 
confinement  can  cause  prisoners  to  experience  “anxiety,
panic,  rage,  loss  of  control,  paranoia,  hallucinations,  and 
self-mutilations,” among many other symptoms); Grassian,
Psychiatric  Effects  of  Solitary  Confinement,  22  Wash
U.  J. L.  &  Policy  325,  331  (2006)  (“[E]ven  a  few  days  of 
solitary  confinement  will  predictably  shift  the  [brain’s] 
electroencephalogram  (EEG)  pattern  toward  an  abnormal
pattern  characteristic  of  stupor  and  delirium”);  accord,  In 
re Medley, 134 U. S. 160, 167–168 (1890); see also Davis v. 
Ayala, ante, at 1–4 (KENNEDY, J., concurring).

The  dehumanizing  effect  of  solitary  confinement  is
aggravated by uncertainty as to whether a death sentence 
will in fact be carried out.  In 1890, this Court recognized 
that,  “when  a  prisoner  sentenced  by  a  court  to  death  is 
confined in the penitentiary awaiting the execution of the 
sentence, one of the most horrible feelings to which he can 
be  subjected  during  that  time  is  the  uncertainty  during
the  whole  of  it.”    Medley,  supra,  at  172.  The  Court  was 
there describing a delay of a mere four weeks.  In the past 
century and a quarter, little has changed in this respect—
except for duration.  Today we must describe delays meas­
ured, not in weeks, but in decades.  Supra, at 18–19.