03 September 2019 :

A federal court judge has ruled that Connecticut’s 11 former death row inmates can sue the state for causing them “cruel and unusual punishment” when they were re-sentenced to highly restrictive life terms. Richard Reynolds, now 50, Black, was sentenced to death in 1995 after he was convicted in the 1992 murder of a police officer. But after the state abolished the death penalty, he was re-sentenced to life in prison. He’s currently classified as a “special circumstances inmate” living in a 12 foot by 7 foot cell. The judge deemed his situation in prison as “cruel and unusual” and he called solitary confinement an “extreme” form of punishment. In 2015, the state Supreme Court declared Connecticut’s death penalty to be unconstitutional and Gov. Dannel P. Malloy signed a law ordering the state’s 11 death row inmates to be resentenced to life in prison without parole. The 11 were re-sentenced to the Special Circumstances High Security Unit at Northern Correctional Institution, the state’s maximum security prison, where they are kept separate from other inmates, remain in their cells for most of the day and have limited visitation, limitations Underhill said that violate the constitution. “The fact that people commit inhumane crimes does not give the state the right to treat them inhumanely,” the judge stated. In his 57-page decision, Underhill relied partly on the comments of state legislators who advocated abolishing the death penalty to support his conclusion. “Life in prison is actually worse or even more punitive than being put to death,” state Sen. Joe Crisco Jr., of Woodbridge, said when the legislature was debating repeal of the death penalty. “How one retains his sanity in an environment like that is incomprehensible,” state Sen. Edith Prague, of Columbia, said at the time. Underhill issued a permanent injunction barring the state from placing Reynolds in high-security status, which includes having him alone in his cell for more than 21 hours a day, from being segregated from other inmates and not being able to have visitors. The state has 30 days to submit a status report to the judge detailing how it has complied with his order. David McGuire agrees. He’s executive director of the Connecticut chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union. He hopes this will prove to be an important test case. “I believe that a lot of the arguments set forth by Richard Reynolds that were ultimately agreed upon by the judge will be used in other cases challenging similarly harsh conditions in Connecticut," McGuire told Connecticut Public Radio. "I also hope that this decision makes very clear to the legislature and elected officials that solitary confinement is counter-productive – it actually makes the prisoners, the guards, and ultimately society less safe -- and really takes a hard look why we use solitary confinement in Connecticut today,” he went on. The state has been ordered to improve the quality of Reynolds’ incarceration within 30 days. A spokesman for Attorney General William Tong says he’s weighing options now. The Department of Correction issued a statement saying it’s also "in the process of reviewing the decision and consulting with our legal team in order to determine a future course of action.”