On January 25, 2018, five Pennsylvania prisoners who had been sentenced to death filed this putative class action lawsuit in the U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Pennsylvania against the Pennsylvania Department of Corrections (DOC). Represented by the Abolitionist Law Center, the ACLU National Prison Project, and the ACLU of Pennsylvania, the plaintiffs sought declaratory and injunctive relief along with attorneys’ fees and costs under 42 U.S.C. § 1983. The plaintiffs challenged the DOC's practice of automatically placing all prisoners who were sentenced to death into solitary confinement merely because they had been sentenced to death and claimed that this violated their Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment and their Fourteenth Amendment right to due process.

The plaintiffs alleged that conditions in solitary confinement meant that prisoners spent 22-24 hours a day inside an 8’-by-12’ cell. Unlike other prisoners, this placement in solitary was not triggered by violations of prison rules or a need for protective custody, and there was no procedure for prisoners to challenge placement in solitary. Nearly 80 percent of these prisoners had spent more than a decade in this form of solitary confinement.

The plaintiffs sought a permanent injunction enjoining the defendants from automatically placing all prisoners who had been sentenced to death in indefinite solitary confinement with no opportunity for review. The plaintiffs also sought a permanent injunction requiring the defendant to present a plan that provides for individual assessment of prisoners who had been sentenced to death based on a validated risk assessment.

The case was assigned to Judge John E. Jones III. On March 29, 2018, the plaintiffs filed an unopposed motion to certify a class and appoint class counsel. The plaintiffs defined the proposed class as “all current and future death-sentenced prisoners in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania.” On April 3, 2018, Judge Jones granted the unopposed motion.

The parties spent the next several months pursuing discovery. The defendants attempted to compel mental health examinations of the plaintiffs but ultimately withdrew the motions.

On November 18, 2019, the parties submitted a joint motion for settlement. The settlement provided that the department of corrections would still house prisoners who had been sentenced to death in specific prisons, but that they would offer to these prisoners rights and privileges offered to prisoners in other state facilities, including:

• At least 42.5 hours out-of-cell activity every week, including yard and outdoor time, law library time, meal time, treatment or counseling meetings, religious worship, work assignment, and visitation;
• Permission to use the phone on a daily basis for at least 15 minutes per usage;
• Incarcerated people will not be subjected to strip-searches, shackling, or other restraints, unless security measures are required in response to a temporary, emergent situation;
• Contact visits with family, lawyers, and religious advisors; and
• Resocialization assistance for individuals psychologically damaged by long periods in solitary confinement to help them in the transition to living in a general population setting, as well and physical and mental health baseline evaluations due to years of neglect.

The agreement was set to last for 3 years, with provisions for shortening or lengthening the term by one year, based on compliance or noncompliance. The court was to maintain jurisdiction during that period, for enforcement of the agreement. The parties agreed the agreement was compliant with the Prison Litigation Reform Act's constraints on entry of enforceable relief, and that they would not seek to terminate the case except based on substantial compliance, for a period of four years.

The court preliminarily approved the settlement on November 20, 2019, and it directed the parties to distribute notice to class members by December 4.

The court received several objections to the interim settlement agreement after class notification and conducted a fairness hearing on March 16, 2020. Judge Jones issued a memorandum and final order approving the final settlement agreement on April 9, 2020, noting that most of the objections concerned implementation of the settlement rather than substantive or procedural aspects of it.

One class member filed a pro se motion to extend time to launch an appeal on May 18, 2020. The court accepted the motion, but no appeal has yet been filed. If no appeal is filed, the case will be considered closed.

Jake Parker - 05/25/2018
Elizabeth Helpling - 11/19/2019
Ellen Aldin - 05/20/2020


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