Miss.
Told to Fix Conditions on Death Row
Poor
state of prison is 'cruel' and offends current concepts of decency, judge
says.
A
federal judge in Mississippi on Wednesday ordered the state to make
wholesale changes in the way it treats death row prisoners, saying their
conditions constituted "cruel and unusual punishment" and
offended "contemporary concepts of decency, human dignity and
precepts of civilization which we profess to possess."
U.S.
Magistrate-Judge Jerry A. Davis' action came in response to a suit filed
last year by the National Prison Project of the American Civil Liberties
Union. The group had asserted that inmates on death row at the Mississippi
State Penitentiary at Parchman were being subjected to "profound
isolation intolerable stench and filth consistent exposure to human
excrement, dangerously high temperatures and humidity insect infestations,
deprivation of basic mental health care and constant exposure to severely
psychotic inmates in adjoining cells."
Davis,
a former federal prosecutor, granted the inmates virtually all the relief
they sought in the lawsuit.
"No
matter how heinous the crime committed, there is no excuse for such living
conditions," he wrote. "It is the duty of the state of
Mississippi to meet these minimal standards of decency, health and
well-being."
Christopher
Epps, Mississippi's corrections commissioner, said he "respectfully
disagreed" with parts of the ruling. He added that the state already
had addressed a number of the issues in the decision and that he would
seek clarification of other parts of the ruling at a meeting with Davis
later this month.
There
are 66 male death row inmates at Parchman � 35 blacks and 31 whites �
who are housed in a unit called 32C, which has about 1,000 prisoners
overall. (A white woman on death row is housed separately at a women's
prison.) Davis said aspects of his order applied to all the inmates in
Unit 32C.
The
suit was filed last year on behalf of six death row inmates � led by
Willie Russell, who has faced execution since 1987 after being convicted
of killing a prison guard while serving time for armed robbery. Problems
at Parchman came to the ACLU's attention when Russell and other inmates
staged a hunger strike to protest their living conditions.
Margaret
Winter, the National Prison Project's associate director, said Davis'
ruling was the broadest ever issued by a federal judge regarding death row
conditions.
"Today's
decision upholds the basic principle that the state must not needlessly,
wantonly inflict pain on any human being � not even a prisoner condemned
to death," Winter said. Her co-counsel, attorney Steve Hanlon, said
he hoped the ruling would "bring immediate relief from the appalling
conditions that have existed in Unit 32C in the summertime in the
Mississippi Delta."
Davis
said the state must take 10 specific steps to remedy the conditions that
prompted his ruling.
Temperatures
in all death row cells, the judge said, must be measured four times a day
from May to September; if the temperature reaches 90 degrees, Parchman
officials must provide each prisoner with a fan, ice water and a daily
shower. Inmates currently get three showers a week and, according to
testimony in the case, are often lacking cool water.
In
addition, Davis said, the state must continue efforts to eradicate
mosquitoes and provide better window screens so inmates are not faced with
the choice of staying in sweltering cells or opening windows and being
bitten.
Davis
also ordered the state to make dramatic changes in its plumbing system so
that excrement flushed from one cell does not end up in the next cell's
toilet. "Prisoners are forced to live in filth," said Terry A.
Kupers, an Oakland psychiatrist who has testified in many prison cases and
who spent 14 hours at the prison in August.
According
to Davis' ruling, the state must give each death row inmate a
comprehensive medical exam � in private � every year; inmates
diagnosed with psychoses or other severe mental health illnesses also must
be housed separately from the others.
Epps
said he had "no problem" with the judge's order on mental health
testing. He said that the state already had hired a new medical company
and that the facility would have two full-time psychiatrists starting in
July.
In
a report submitted to Davis, Kupers called the conditions on Unit 32C
"cruel, harsh and inhumane."
"The
presence of severely psychotic prisoners who foul their cells, stop up
their toilets, flood the tiers with excrement and keep other prisoners
awake all night with their incessant screams and shouts [is] virtually
certain to cause medical illnesses and a destruction of mental stability
and functioning," Kupers wrote.
The
judge clearly heeded those observations.
"The
isolation of death row, along with the inmates' pending sentences of death
and the conditions at Unit 32C, are enough to weaken even the strongest
individual," Davis wrote. "If the state is going to exact the
ultimate penalty against these inmates, then it must meet the mental
health needs of each death row inmate and not merely warehouse them."
Dr.
Susi Vassollo, a professor at the New York University School of Medicine
who also visited the prison and testified in the case, praised the ruling
as well. Vassollo, an expert on the medical effects of heat, said it was
fortunate that no death row inmate had died at Parchman, given the
conditions there.
"The
heat index was shocking in those cells, and there was no air flow,"
she said.
The
judge also ordered improved cell lighting and said inmates must be
provided with adequate supplies so they can clean their cells weekly. He
also said death row inmates must be provided a shaded exercise area.
Davis
said the state could not use "monetary considerations" as a
reason for failing to comply with his order.
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