The US Court of Appeals for the Third Circuit [website] ruled [opinion, PDF] Thursday that the practice of keeping former death row inmates in solitary confinement after their death sentences have been vacated is unlawful. The plaintiffs, Craig Williams and Shawn T. Walker, are inmates in the custody of the defendant Pennsylvania Department of Corrections. Both were sentenced to death after being convicted of separate murders in the early 1990s. Williams’s death sentence was vacated in 2006, and Walker’s was vacated [opinions, PDF] in 2004. Despite no longer being on death row, the two men remained in solitary confinement, where they were kept in 7×12 foot windowless cells for nearly 24 hours a day. Williams remained in solitary confinement for six additional years, and Walker for a eight additional years, bringing their total time in solitary to 20 and 22 years, respectively. The appellate court ruled that inmates who have had their death sentence vacated cannot remain on death row without “receiv[ing] meaningful review of their continuing placement on death row to determine if the deprivations of that placement were necessary.”

The legality of solitary confinement has been an ongoing debate in the US, with many calling for comprehensive prison reform [JURIST podcast]. Last month the American Civil Liberties Union released a report [JURIST report] on the effects of solitary confinement on inmates with physical disabilities. Last January former US President Barack Obama announced a ban on the federal prison system’s use of solitary confinement for juveniles [JURIST report]. In September 2015 the Association of State Correctional Administrators, in partnership with the Arthur Liman Public Interest Program at Yale Law School released a report [text, PDF] estimating that between 80,000 to 100,000 prisoners were in what correctional officials call “restrictive housing” in 2014. Also that September, California agreed [JURIST report] to restrict its controversial practices of solitary confinement. The class action lawsuit was brought by the Center for Constitutional Rights, which alleged that approximately 3,000 prisoners were kept in isolated conditions in which they were alone for 22 hours a day, sometimes in windowless cells.