Opinion ID: 4561956
Heading Depth: 2
Heading Rank: 5

Heading: O.P. 9.1 (2018). But it is incorrect.

Text: The majority overstates the extent to which caselaw has “advanced” in the direction that the majority perceives. The Supreme Court has never held that solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment, and it continues to rebuff fervid invitations to do so. See supra note 5. Our Court has not held that the conditions of confinement on Pennsylvania’s death row are unconstitutional, and we have a long train of decisions to the contrary. See supra note 6 (collecting cases). And we are not an outlier. “The practice of solitary confinement remains unrestrained by the Constitution in just about all forms, imposed on just about all groups of prisoners, in just about all jurisdictions in America.” Andrew Leon Hanna, The Present Constitutional Status of Solitary Confinement, 21 U. Pa. J. Const. L. Online 1, 5 (2019). “[T]he Eighth Amendment has done little to no work in the area of solitary confinement”; indeed, “[i]f there are any true substantive limitations on the conditions presented by solitary or the length of time that a person may be placed in extreme isolation, they have not come from constitutional law.” Alexander A. Reinert, Solitary Troubles, 93 Notre Dame L. Rev. 927, 932, 944 (2018). In support of its assertion that caselaw has “advanced considerably” since Peterkin, the majority cites one case from another circuit, Porter v. Clarke, 923 F.3d 348 (4th Cir. 2019). Clarke was the first and remains the only Court of Appeals decision holding that solitary confinement violates the Eighth Amendment. See Maj. Op. 38 (“But only one circuit has [found an Eighth Amendment violation] . . . in connection with solitary confinement on death row.”). But its relevance to Porter’s case is limited because Virginia—unlike Pennsylvania—did not statutorily require that death-sentenced inmates remain in solitary confinement. Rather, the decision was left solely to the discretion of the state department of 17 corrections. See Va. Code Ann. § 53.1-234. Also, the state defendants inexplicably waived their obligation to adduce legitimate penological considerations justifying the prison officials’ discretionary decisions to isolate death row prisoners. And the state defendants did this notwithstanding the court’s acknowledgement that “a legitimate penological justification can support prolonged detention of an inmate in segregated or solitary confinement, similar to the challenged conditions on Virginia’s death row, even though such conditions create an objective risk of serious emotional and psychological harm.” Clarke, 923 F.3d at 362–63. One easily distinguishable case in another jurisdiction hardly constitutes a sea change in the law, so I disagree that the caselaw has “advanced considerably.” At bottom, the majority jettisons Peterkin because of “scientific and medical research” which allegedly provides insight about solitary confinement that we lacked when deciding Peterkin (1988), or for that matter Young (1992) and Griffin (1997). Maj. Op. 18–21. That seems to me a dubious proposition. Long before such research emerged, Americans well-understood the baleful effect of solitary confinement on some inmates. Alexis de Tocqueville vividly wrote about the American practice in 1833,9 as did Charles Dickens in 1842.10 And in 1890, the Supreme Court pointedly remarked: 9 “This experiment, of which the favourable results had been anticipated, proved fatal for the majority of prisoners. It devours the victim incessantly and unmercifully; it does not reform, it kills. The unfortunate creatures submitted to this experiment wasted away . . . .” Craig Haney & Mona Lynch, Regulating Prisons of the Future: A Psychological Analysis of Supermax and Solitary Confinement, 23 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 477, 484 (1997) (citing Torsten Eriksson, The Reformers, An Historical Survey of Pioneer Experiments in the Treatment of Criminals 49 (1976) (quoting Alexis de Tocqueville and Gustave de Beaumont)). 10 “The system here, is rigid, strict, and hopeless solitary confinement. I believe it, in its effects, to be cruel and wrong . . . . [T]here is a depth of terrible endurance in it which none but the sufferers themselves can fathom, and which no man has a right to inflict upon his fellow-creature. I hold this slow and daily tampering with the mysteries of the brain, to be 18 A considerable number of the prisoners fell, after even a short [solitary] confinement, into a semi- fatuous condition, from which it was next to impossible to arouse them, and others became violently insane; others still, committed suicide; while those who stood the ordeal better were not generally reformed, and in most cases did not recover sufficient mental activity to be of any subsequent service to the community. In re Medley, 134 U.S. 160, 168 (1890). Throughout the twentieth century, similar criticisms were raised, and political and legal challenges were asserted against the use of solitary confinement. Those controversies attracted the attention of psychologists and psychiatrists who “wrote and testified about the nature, magnitude, and longterm consequences of these acute negative effects.” Craig Haney & Mona Lynch, Regulating Prisons of the Future: A Psychological Analysis of Supermax and Solitary Confinement, 23 N.Y.U. Rev. L. & Soc. Change 477, 491 (1997). So while scientific articles may have proliferated in recent years, we have not witnessed some kind of Copernican shift in our understanding. The risk of potential harm from immeasurably worse than any torture of the body: and because its ghastly signs and tokens are not so palpable to the eye and sense of touch as scars upon the flesh; because its wounds are not upon the surface, and it extorts few cries that human ears can hear; therefore I the more denounce it, as a secret punishment which slumbering humanity is not roused up to stay . . . . I solemnly declare, that with no rewards or honours could I walk a happy man beneath the open sky by day, or lie me down upon my bed at night, with the consciousness that one human creature, for any length of time, no matter what, lay suffering this unknown punishment in his silent cell, and I the cause, or I consenting to it in the least degree.” Eleanor Umphres, Note, Solitary Confinement: An Unethical Denial of Meaningful Due Process, 30 Geo. J. Legal Ethics 1057, 1062 (2017) (quoting Charles Dickens, American Notes for General Circulation 54 (1867)). 19 solitary confinement (as well as the obvious possible Eighth Amendment implications) has long been well-known. More pointedly, it was not lost on our Court when we decided Peterkin. We described the plaintiffs’ allegations of insanity, suicide, lethargy, anger, and psychological deterioration as “deeply disturbing” though not unconstitutional. Peterkin, 855 F.2d at 1033. None of the “scientific and medical research” upon which the majority relies so heavily was included in the record of this case. So this panel has not even seen the relevant studies. Instead, the majority simply declares that the risk of harms discussed in unidentified scientific and medical research is “well established,” citing dicta from other cases and an amicus brief. Maj. Op. 18–21. Thus, the evidentiary burden is neatly flipped in this case: The substantial risk of harm that Porter must show is simply presumed as though it were judicially noticeable. I believe we should at least attend to the scientific research rather than merely accept descriptions of it, sightunseen, as settled adjudicative fact. If we did, we may be surprised to find that the allegedly robust consensus is a bit overstated. For example, in July 2015, President Obama “directed Attorney General Loretta E. Lynch and the Justice Department to review the overuse of solitary confinement across U.S. prisons.”11 As part of that review, the U.S. Department of Justice’s National Institute of Justice12 issued a March 2016 11 Barack Obama, Opinion, Why We Must Rethink Solitary Confinement, Wash. Post, Jan. 25, 2016, https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/barack-obamawhy-we-must-rethink-solitary- confinement/2016/01/25/29a361f2-c384-11e5-89650607e0e265ce_story.html (last visited July 28, 2020). 12 “The National Institute of Justice (NIJ) focuses on research, development, and evaluation of crime control and justice issues. NIJ provides objective, independent, evidence-based knowledge and tools to meet the challenge of criminal justice, particularly at local and state levels.” See 20 paper titled “Administrative Segregation in U.S. Prisons,” in which it surveyed the research on the psychological effects of solitary confinement and other types of administrative segregation as practiced throughout the United States. See https://www.ncjrs.gov/pdffiles1/nij/249749.pdf (last visited July 28, 2020). Here are some of the findings in the NIJ report: • “The only clear statement that can be made about the body of literature assessing the psychological effects of solitary confinement is that researchers using different methods to study different populations have come to different conclusions about the psychological effects on inmates.” Id. at 16. • “Although rarely acknowledged, the psychological/psychiatric effects research frequently relies on a large body of literature on the effects of sensory deprivation. . . . [I]t is often taken for granted that isolation will have severe and lasting detrimental effects on the psychological well-being of all those exposed to it, even though the evidence in this area does not always bear out this assumption . . . .” Id. n.10. • “Other respected scholars have also been less than convinced by the accumulated evidence regarding psychological effects. Bonta and Gendreau (1990), for example, argued that little evidence exists of deteriorating mental health among inmates, emphasizing that ‘long-term imprisonment and specific conditions of confinement such as solitary, under limiting and humane conditions, fail to show any sort of profound detrimental effects.’” Id. at 17. https://www.ojp.gov/about/offices/national-institute-justicenij (last visited July 28, 2020). 21 • Researchers’ “findings could just as easily be interpreted as demonstrating that incarceration in and of itself has damaging effects on the mental health of individuals subjected to it, especially initially.” Id. at 18. • Meta-analytic scholars “found only weak effects of solitary confinement on inmate outcomes (most of which were psychological) and concluded that their meta-analytic review did not find support for the long-argued contention that solitary confinement has lasting psychological effects on those subjected to it.” Id. at 22. • Findings from recent meta-analyses “cast some doubts about [solitary confinement] being as devastating to inmates as has often been portrayed in the media and by some human rights organizations, activists, and scholars who vehemently oppose the practice on moral/ethical grounds . . . .” Id. • “After a thorough review of the extant literature [on the practice of all types of administrative segregation throughout the United States], it is clear that, in 2015, the answers continue to be few and the questions many. It is equally clear that when researchers have disagreed, and in this area they have tended to disagree passionately, they have not always been speaking the same language or conducting research with equivalent populations.” Id. at 23. • “What is more, for many researchers studying solitary confinement, the practice raises not only empirical 22 questions but also moral and ethical concerns that will persist regardless of the breadth or depth of the evidence base. Across a literature replete with highly charged emotions, interpreting the evidence and separating evidence from strongly held beliefs have become exceptionally difficult.” Id. These bullet points are not fully representative of the NIJ report. It also finds, for example, that “a substantial body of work has established that solitary confinement can have damaging psychological effects, particularly when that confinement involves near complete isolation and sensory deprivation, or when the term of such confinement is extended.” Id. at 17. But my point is that the purported “consensus” of recent medical and scientific research is not so “robust” and univocal as to justify overturning Peterkin, just because that case was decided in 1988. At least according to the NIJ report, the scientific evidence is ambiguous, contested, and ideologically charged. But the majority does not even acknowledge the ongoing debate, choosing instead to repeat broad, one-sided pronouncements. B The subjective prong of the conditions-of-confinement standard requires a prisoner to establish that prison officials acted with deliberate indifference. Wilson, 501 U.S. at 302–03. A prison official is deliberately indifferent when he “knows of and disregards an excessive risk to inmate health or safety[.]” Farmer, 511 U.S. at 837. The deliberate indifference test is thus individualized for each prison official responsible for inmates’ care. The majority asserts that Porter has satisfied the subjective prong because officials from Pennsylvania’s Department of Corrections are aware of risks that accompany solitary confinement. Maj. Op. 25–30. But Porter has not been in solitary confinement because of the discretionary decisions or policies of DOC officials acting with the “requisite culpable state of mind.” See Wilson, 501 U.S. at 297. Instead, the citizens of Pennsylvania, through their elected representatives in the General Assembly, have 23 determined that he must remain in solitary confinement while on death row. See 61 Pa. Cons. Stat. § 4303. For this reason, I believe the majority’s entire discussion of the subjective prong is ill-considered. As the Court noted in Wilson, Estelle first extended Eighth Amendment protections to “some deprivations that were not specifically part of the sentence but were suffered during imprisonment.” 501 U.S. at 297 (emphasis added). Accordingly, the subjective prong is inapplicable when, as here, the challenged condition is “formally meted out as punishment by the statute or the sentencing judge.” Id. at 300; see also Thaddeus-X v. Blatter, 175 F.3d 378, 401 (6th Cir. 1999) (“All Eighth Amendment claims have an objective component, and when ‘the pain inflicted is not formally meted out as punishment by the statute or the sentencing judge, some mental element must be attributed to the inflicting officer’ in order to make out the subjective component of an Eighth Amendment violation.” (emphasis added) (quoting Wilson, 501 U.S. at 300)). The Supreme Court has applied the conditions-of- confinement standard to medical care;13 disciplinary (i.e., discretionary) solitary confinement;14 double celling;15 injuries caused by prison guards;16 and injuries caused by other inmates.17 None of those cases dealt with a statutorily imposed condition of punishment, and for good reasons. The impossibility of imputing subjective intention to a collective body is well-known. See generally John F. Manning, Inside Congress’s Mind, 115 Colum. L. Rev. 1911, 1918–21 (2015); Kenneth A. Shepsle, Congress Is a “They,” Not an “It”: Legislative Intent as Oxymoron, 12 Int’l Rev. L. & Econ. 239 (1992). And Wilson makes clear that the subjective prong applies only to “Eighth Amendment claims based on official conduct that does not purport to be the penalty formally 13 See Estelle v. Gamble, 429 U.S. 97 (1976). 14 See Hutto v. Finney, 437 U.S. 678 (1978). 15 See Rhodes v. Chapman, 452 U.S. 337 (1981). 16 See Hudson v. McMillian, 503 U.S. 1 (1992); Whitley v. Albers, 475 U.S. 312 (1986). 17 See Farmer v. Brennan, 511 U.S. 825 (1994); Helling v. McKinney, 509 U.S. 25 (1993). 24 imposed for a crime[.]” Wilson, 501 U.S. at 302. Because the majority elides the critical distinction between the discretionary acts of deliberately indifferent prison officials and the faithful enforcement of a law enacted by the Pennsylvania Legislature, its subjective-prong analysis is unpersuasive.