Supreme Court Rejects Appeal of Prisoner Kept in Solitary Confinement | Dec 2023
December 2023 | Volume 15, Issue 5
Read the full article from CNN.com
According to the article, the U.S. Supreme Court recently declined to take up the appeal of an Illinois inmate whose lawyers argued his rights were violated when he was kept in solitary confinement for some three years and denied virtually all access to exercise.
The inmate, Michael Johnson, argued that the deprivation of yard time – in the absence of a true security justification – violated the Constitution’s ban on cruel and inhumane punishment.
Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson, joined by her liberal colleagues Justices Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan, dissented from the court’s decision not to take up Johnson’s appeal, highlighting the dismal conditions.
“For three years,” Jackson wrote, “Johnson had no opportunity at all to stretch his limbs or breathe fresh air.” She noted that without the ability to exercise, Johnson’s “mental state deteriorated rapidly.”
“He suffered from hallucinations, excoriated his own flesh, urinated and defecated on himself, and smeared feces all over his body and cell,” Jackson wrote in the eight-page dissent.
Johnson began serving his sentence in February 2007. He has been classified as seriously mentally ill and diagnosed with depression, and bipolar disorder, among other disorders. Between 2008 and 2016, he had multiple conduct violations including assaulting correctional officers or other inmates, and his accrued segregation time meant that he spent almost three and a half years in solitary confinement.
A lower court ruled against Johnson, holding that the deprivation of exercise passed legal muster unless it was imposed for a “trivial infraction.” It noted that the actions taken by the Illinois Department of Corrections were justified because of the “continuous, serious and sometimes highly dangerous misconduct.”
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul told the justices in court papers that due to “persistent misconduct,” he was “on yard restrictions” from January 2014 to August 2016 but that he regularly met with doctors and mental health professionals supplied by the prison healthcare provider. In August 2016, it was determined that he needed to be transferred to a mental health unit and he was relocated.
Raoul told the justices that officials “could not have acted with deliberate indifference because they reasonably deferred to the treatment decisions” made by Johnson’s doctors.
But lawyers for Johnson disagreed.
“The deprivation was not imposed to ensure the safety and security of the exercise yard,” they argued, “but rather to punish Mr. Johnson for engaging in misconduct that was born of mental illness and unrelated to exercise.”
Discussion Questions
- Research and recount the language of the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution.
According to the Eighth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution:
“Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted.” - In terms of the Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual” punishment prohibition, is this an exacting standard? Why or why not? In your reasoned opinion, should the Framers of the Constitution have given greater guidance regarding what constitutes (and what does not constitute) cruel and unusual punishment? Why or why not?
The Eighth Amendment’s “cruel and unusual” punishment is not an exacting standard; instead, is subject to interpretation. In terms of whether the Framers of the Constitution should have given greater guidance regarding what constitutes (and what does not constitute) cruel and unusual punishment, this is an opinion question, so student opinions may vary.
In your author’s opinion, the language is preferable as presented, since the generalized language serves as a generalized and fundamental prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment. In terms of more exacting (i.e., specific) language, it would have been impossible for the Framers to have elucidated all the various forms of cruel and unusual punishment, both real and imagined, and both present and future. - In your reasoned opinion, did the Supreme Court violate its constitutional obligations in terms of refusing to review the subject case of the Illinois inmate? Why or why not?
The Supreme Court did not violate its constitutional obligations in terms of refusing to review the subject case of the Illinois inmate. Generally, the review of a case by the Supreme Court is discretionary, meaning that it is the Court’s decision as to whether to accept a case on appeal. This is known as the Writs of Certiorari and is defined as:
Parties who are not satisfied with the decision of a lower court must petition the U.S. Supreme Court to hear their case. The primary means to petition the court for review is to ask it to grant a writ of certiorari. This is a request that the Supreme Court order a lower court to send up the record of the case for review. The Court usually is not under any obligation to hear these cases, and it usually only does so if the case could have national significance, might harmonize conflicting decisions in the federal Circuit courts, and/or could have precedential value. In fact, the Court accepts 100-150 of the more than 7,000 cases that it is asked to review each year. Typically, the Court hears cases that have been decided in either an appropriate U.S. Court of Appeals or the highest Court in a given state (if the state court decided a Constitutional issue).
The Supreme Court has its own set of rules. According to these rules, four of the nine Justices must vote to accept a case. Five of the nine Justices must vote in order to grant a stay, e.g., a stay of execution in a death penalty case. Under certain instances, one Justice may grant a stay pending review by the entire Court.
Although your author would have preferred for the Supreme Court to have taken up the Illinois inmate case since it involves a substantial constitutional question (more specifically, interpretation of the Eighth Amendment’s prohibition against “cruel and unusual” punishment), again, it is the Court’s discretion.