Liman Rethinking Death Row, July 2016
1
All rights reserved; Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, 2016. For additional information, contact
[email protected]. T
he primary authors
of this
Report are Celina Aldape, Ryan Cooper, Katie Haas, April Hu, Jessica Hunter, and Shelle Shimizu, Yale Law School students participating in this Liman Project from 2014 to
2016, and working under the supervision of Johanna Kalb, Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Director, Arthur
Liman Public Interest Program, and Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law.
We thank Kenneth Lassiter, Deputy Director for Operations, North Carolina Department of Public Safety;
George Lombardi, Director, Missouri Department of Corrections; Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado
Department of Corrections; and Kellie Wasko, Deputy Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections, all
of whom shared their experiences and then reviewed the descriptions of their work prior to this Report’s publication.
Thanks are also due to the many colleagues who helped us shape the Report and who provided advice on research:
Burke Butler, Staff Attorney, Texas Defender Service; George Camp, Co-Executive Director, Association of State
Correctional Administrators; Mark D. Cunningham, Ph.D., ABPP; David Fathi, Director of the American Civil
Liberties Union’s National Prison Project; Amy Fettig, Senior Staff Counsel for the American Civil Liberties
Union’s National Prison Project; Meredith Martin Rountree, Visiting Assistant Professor, Northwestern School of
Law; Brian W. Stull, Senior Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union, Capital Defense Project; and Sandra
Babcock, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. Yet more thanks are due to Sarah Baumgartel, Senior
Liman Fellow in Residence, and Yale Law School staff, Bonnie Posick and Christine Donahue Mullen, who have
thoughtfully helped in bringing this project to fruition.
2
Deborah Fins, Death Row U.S.A., NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 1 (Fall 2015), available at
http://www.naacpldf.org/files/our-work/DRUSA_Fall_2015.pdf (identifying total number of death-sentenced
prisoners as 2,959 as of October 1, 2015).
3
See, e.g., Stuart Grassian, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, 22 WASH. U. J. L. & POL’Y 325 (2006)
(describing evidence of severe psychiatric harm resulting from solitary confinement); Craig Haney, Mental Health
Issues in Long-Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement, 49 CRIME & DELINQ. 124 (2003) (reviewing literature
on negative psychological effects caused by isolation and the high percentage of mentally ill prisoners confined in
isolation); Fatos Kaba, Andrea Lewis, Sarah Glowa-Kollisch, James Hadler, David Lee, Howard Alper, Daniel
Selling, Ross MacDonald, Angela Solimo, Amanda Parsons & Homer Venters, Solitary Confinement and Risk of
Self-Harm Among Jail Inmates, 104 AM. J. PUBLIC HEALTH 442 (2014) (concluding acts of self-harm are
significantly associated with having been in solitary confinement); Jeffrey L. Metzner & Jamie Fellner, Solitary
Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics, 38 J. AM. ACAD. PSYCHIATRY &
L. 104 (2010) (describing effects of solitary confinement on prisoners with preexisting serious mental illness); John
J. Gibbons & Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, Confronting Confinement: A Report of the Commission on Safety and
Abuse in America’s Prisons, VERA INST. OF JUSTICE 54-55 (2006), available at
http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Confronting_Confinement.pdf (noting research efforts
suggesting that the increasing use of expensive segregated housing units can cause violence inside facilities and
increase recidivism); A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas, AM. CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION OF TEX. (Feb. 2015) [hereinafter A Solitary Failure], available at
https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/SolitaryReport_2015.pdf; see also Cyrus Ahalt and Brie
Williams, Reforming Solitary-Confinement Policy – Heeding a Presidential Call to Action, 374 N. ENG. J. MED.
1704 (2016) (calling for new research on the health consequences of solitary confinement).
4
Sarah Baumgartel, Corey Guilmette, Johanna Kalb, Diana Li, Josh Nuni, Devon Porter & Judith Resnik, Time-In-
Cell: The ASCA-Liman 2014 National Survey of Administrative Segregation in Prison, THE LIMAN PROGRAM, YALE
LAW SCHOOL 58 (2015) [hereinafter ASCA-Liman, Time-in-Cell] (reporting that incentives for making changes to
administrative segregation policies according to members of the Association of State Correctional Administrators
included, inter alia: concerns about prisoner and staff well-being, concerns about prisoner and staff safety,
space/facility constraints, and possible cost savings), available at
https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files /documents/asca-liman_administrativesegregationreport.pdf; see also A
Solitary Failure, supra note 3, at 9 (estimating that Texas taxpayers spend $46 million or more per year to house
prisoners in solitary confinement rather than in the general population).
Liman Rethinking Death Row, July 2016
1
All rights reserved; Arthur Liman Public Interest Program, 2016. For additional information, contact
[email protected]. T
he primary authors
of this
Report are Celina Aldape, Ryan Cooper, Katie Haas, April Hu, Jessica Hunter, and Shelle Shimizu, Yale Law School students participating in this Liman Project from 2014 to
2016, and working under the supervision of Johanna Kalb, Visiting Associate Professor of Law and Director, Arthur
Liman Public Interest Program, and Judith Resnik, Arthur Liman Professor of Law.
We thank Kenneth Lassiter, Deputy Director for Operations, North Carolina Department of Public Safety;
George Lombardi, Director, Missouri Department of Corrections; Rick Raemisch, Executive Director, Colorado
Department of Corrections; and Kellie Wasko, Deputy Executive Director, Colorado Department of Corrections, all
of whom shared their experiences and then reviewed the descriptions of their work prior to this Report’s publication.
Thanks are also due to the many colleagues who helped us shape the Report and who provided advice on research:
Burke Butler, Staff Attorney, Texas Defender Service; George Camp, Co-Executive Director, Association of State
Correctional Administrators; Mark D. Cunningham, Ph.D., ABPP; David Fathi, Director of the American Civil
Liberties Union’s National Prison Project; Amy Fettig, Senior Staff Counsel for the American Civil Liberties
Union’s National Prison Project; Meredith Martin Rountree, Visiting Assistant Professor, Northwestern School of
Law; Brian W. Stull, Senior Staff Attorney, American Civil Liberties Union, Capital Defense Project; and Sandra
Babcock, Clinical Professor of Law, Cornell Law School. Yet more thanks are due to Sarah Baumgartel, Senior
Liman Fellow in Residence, and Yale Law School staff, Bonnie Posick and Christine Donahue Mullen, who have
thoughtfully helped in bringing this project to fruition.
2
Deborah Fins, Death Row U.S.A., NAACP Legal Defense and Educational Fund, Inc. 1 (Fall 2015), available at
http://www.naacpldf.org/files/our-work/DRUSA_Fall_2015.pdf (identifying total number of death-sentenced
prisoners as 2,959 as of October 1, 2015).
3
See, e.g., Stuart Grassian, Psychiatric Effects of Solitary Confinement, 22 WASH. U. J. L. & POL’Y 325 (2006)
(describing evidence of severe psychiatric harm resulting from solitary confinement); Craig Haney, Mental Health
Issues in Long-Term Solitary and “Supermax” Confinement, 49 CRIME & DELINQ. 124 (2003) (reviewing literature
on negative psychological effects caused by isolation and the high percentage of mentally ill prisoners confined in
isolation); Fatos Kaba, Andrea Lewis, Sarah Glowa-Kollisch, James Hadler, David Lee, Howard Alper, Daniel
Selling, Ross MacDonald, Angela Solimo, Amanda Parsons & Homer Venters, Solitary Confinement and Risk of
Self-Harm Among Jail Inmates, 104 AM. J. PUBLIC HEALTH 442 (2014) (concluding acts of self-harm are
significantly associated with having been in solitary confinement); Jeffrey L. Metzner & Jamie Fellner, Solitary
Confinement and Mental Illness in U.S. Prisons: A Challenge for Medical Ethics, 38 J. AM. ACAD. PSYCHIATRY &
L. 104 (2010) (describing effects of solitary confinement on prisoners with preexisting serious mental illness); John
J. Gibbons & Nicholas de B. Katzenbach, Confronting Confinement: A Report of the Commission on Safety and
Abuse in America’s Prisons, VERA INST. OF JUSTICE 54-55 (2006), available at
http://www.vera.org/sites/default/files/resources/downloads/Confronting_Confinement.pdf (noting research efforts
suggesting that the increasing use of expensive segregated housing units can cause violence inside facilities and
increase recidivism); A Solitary Failure: The Waste, Cost and Harm of Solitary Confinement in Texas, AM. CIVIL
LIBERTIES UNION OF TEX. (Feb. 2015) [hereinafter A Solitary Failure], available at
https://www.aclutx.org/sites/default/files/field_documents/SolitaryReport_2015.pdf; see also Cyrus Ahalt and Brie
Williams, Reforming Solitary-Confinement Policy – Heeding a Presidential Call to Action, 374 N. ENG. J. MED.
1704 (2016) (calling for new research on the health consequences of solitary confinement).
4
Sarah Baumgartel, Corey Guilmette, Johanna Kalb, Diana Li, Josh Nuni, Devon Porter & Judith Resnik, Time-In-
Cell: The ASCA-Liman 2014 National Survey of Administrative Segregation in Prison, THE LIMAN PROGRAM, YALE
LAW SCHOOL 58 (2015) [hereinafter ASCA-Liman, Time-in-Cell] (reporting that incentives for making changes to
administrative segregation policies according to members of the Association of State Correctional Administrators
included, inter alia: concerns about prisoner and staff well-being, concerns about prisoner and staff safety,
space/facility constraints, and possible cost savings), available at
https://www.law.yale.edu/system/files /documents/asca-liman_administrativesegregationreport.pdf; see also A
Solitary Failure, supra note 3, at 9 (estimating that Texas taxpayers spend $46 million or more per year to house
prisoners in solitary confinement rather than in the general population).