A worldwide legislation agency with an workplace in Houston filed a category motion lawsuit Thursday alleging Texas’s prison conditions and insurance policies violate the state and federal constitutional rights of their shoppers on death row.
“For 23 years, Texas has subjected all male death row defendants to mandatory and indefinite solitary confinement, a psychologically and physically damaging practice,” the grievance filed by the Hogan Lovells agency within the Southern District of Texas mentioned.
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The roughly 185 male death row inmates at present incarcerated on the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston are “condemned to die at the hands of the state” because of the enforcement of a blanket policy proscribing them to their 8-by-12 toes jail cells for 22 to 24 hours a day inflicting an absence of human contact, the grievance states. The cells on the facility comprise solely a sink, a rest room, a skinny mattress and a small window.
The cells on the Allan B. Polunsky Unit comprise solely a sink, a rest room, a skinny mattress and a small window.
Solitary WatchA restriction of medical care and the shortcoming to fulfill confidentially with their attorneys due to Texas’s solitary assured policy induces extreme bodily and psychological hurt among the many affected inmates, the 45-page lawsuit states. Medical visits on the Polunsky Death Row Unit are “sporadic” and authorized visits can take weeks to schedule, the grievance provides.
Defendants named within the lawsuit embrace Bryan Collier, government director of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; Bobby Lumpkin, director of the Correction Institutions Division of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice; and Daniel Dickerson, the warden of the Allan B. Polunksy Unit.
“The conditions on death row in Texas have been characterized as some of the most brutal death row conditions in the country,” Hogan Lovells partner Pieter Van Tol said in a news release. “The plaintiffs, in this case, are seeking relief from conditions that have been described as torture.”
Robert Hurst, a TDCJ spokesman, mentioned the division doesn’t touch upon pending litigation.
Cell door on the Allan B. Polunsky Unit.
Solitary WatchMark Robertson, 54; George Curry, 55; Tony Egbuna Ford, 49; Rickey Cummings, 33; and different prisoners not named within the grievance are in search of damages and everlasting modifications to Texas’s insurance policies.
The lawsuit references the National Commission of Correctional Health Care’s assertion that solitary assured larger than 15 consecutive days is “merciless, inhumane, and degrading therapy, and dangerous to a person’s well being,” and “should be eliminated as a means of punishment.”
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“Despite this consensus, death row prisoners in Texas spend an average of 17 years and seven months confined alone in their cells, until they are executed by the State of Texas,” the grievance states.
The common time on death row previous to execution in Texas is about 11 years, in keeping with the TDCJ.
Layout of the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston.
Solitary WatchInmates on the Polunsky Death Row Unit recurrently go weeks with out enough out-of-cell leisure time, the lawsuit alleges. The facility is meant to stick to the Death Row Plan adopted by the TDCJ in 2004, which allows Level I offenders at Polunsky with both seven 1-hour alternatives for bodily recreation per week, 5 2-hour alternatives per week or 4 3-hour alternatives per week.
The Death Row Plan additionally permits in-cell arts and crafts tasks, which the lawsuit states is not being offered. In addition to the dearth of recreation, prisoners in death row segregation have not been allowed to bathe seven days per week, the grievance states.
Texas leads the U.S. within the variety of executions because the death penalty was reinstated in 1976, the TDCJ states.
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