Class action lawsuit alleges prison authorities inflict ‘cruel and unusual punishment’ in breach of constitutional rights
The southern state has long been among the most enthusiastic applicants of capital punishment in the US. Since the death penalty was restarted in the modern era in 1976, Texas has executed 575 men and women, according to theThe class action suit points out that there is a wealth of scientific literature that shows that solitary confinement can cause serious and sometimes irreparable psychological and physical damage in as little as 15 days.
Yet since 1999 all male condemned prisoners in Texas have been held indefinitely in isolation at the Allan B Polunsky unit north of Houston which houses death row. “All persons sentenced to death are placed in solitary confinement and must be continuously held in isolation while they await execution,” Hogan Lovells notes.On average, the lawsuit records, death row prisoners in Texas spend 17 years and seven months alone in their 7ft by 11ft cells until they are judicially killed.
It adds: “These prisoners sleep, eat, and live most of their lives alone in this tiny cell. At a maximum, they leave this cell only once per day when they are moved to individual concrete-and-metal cages and permitted to exercise alone.” Four death row inmates, all of them convicted murderers, have leant their names to the suit as plaintiffs: Tony Egbuna Ford, 49, who has spent 22 years in solitary; Mark Robertson, 54, 21 years in solitary; Rickey Cummings, 33, nine years; and George Curry, 55, seven years.
Each of the plaintiffs, the suit says, has experienced the severe impacts of being held for so long in isolation. Symptoms range from nightmares and insomnia to anxiety and panic attacks, aggression and rage, paranoia, mood swings and hallucinations.
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