February 21, 2018

A federal court in Virginia declared Virginia death row's pre-2015 conditions of confinement unconstitutional cruel and unusual punishment. And the court enjoined the director of the Virginia Department of Corrections and the warden of Sussex I State Prison from returning Virginia's death row to pre-2015 conditions of confinement.

In Porter v. Clarke, the Eastern District of Virginia granted summary judgment for plaintiffs Thomas Porter, Anthony Juniper, and Mark Lawlor, who are currently under death sentences, and former plaintiff Ricky Gray, who was executed in January 2017. Mr. Porter, Mr. Juniper, and Mr. Lawlor are represented by attorneys Jeffrey Fogel, Victor Glasberg, and Steven Rosenfield.

Although Virginia had revised its death row conditions of confinement in response to the Porter litigation in 2015, the Commonwealth had not committed to keeping those changes. So the court enjoined the defendants from imposing on plaintiffs pre-2015 conditions of confinement, including twenty-three hours per day in solitary confinement, no contact visitation, no congregate recreation or programming, and only five hours per week of outdoor recreation in separate cages.

According to Mr. Glasberg, one of the plaintiffs' counsel, the Eastern District of Virginia's Judge Brinkema is the first federal judge to find death row conditions of confinement to be unconstitutional.

For more information, see: https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/public-safety/federal-judge-orders-virginia-to-retain-death-row-reforms/2018/02/22/991f72fc-17e0-11e8-8b08-027a6ccb38eb_story.html?utm_term=.17eababd7f07