Solitary confinement nearly 24 hours a day and other prison conditions are violating the federal and state constitutional rights of 185 male Texas inmates on death row, according to a new lawsuit filed last week in Houston federal court.
The class-action lawsuit, filed pro bono by a team of lawyers from Hogan Lovells, also says that practices in place at the Allan B. Polunsky Unit in Livingston, Texas violate not only the inmates’ constitutional rights, but also the Texas Department of Criminal Justice’s own policies, and that they contradict caselaw in multiple federal circuits, including the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit.
No lawyers have appeared for the defendants, which include officials at the Texas Department of Criminal Justice, the Correction Institutions Division and the Polunsky Unit, and the case has been assigned to U.S. District Judge Lynn Hughes.
The 45-page lawsuit says the death row prisoners are in solitary confinement between 22 and 24 hours a day in small cells and sometimes go weeks without recreational time. It also says that the inmates receive inadequate medical attention — including those who struggle with mental illness — and current conditions of the Polunsky Unit do not allow for inmates to receive adequate and private legal assistance when their lawyers visit.
“Rather than taking place in private rooms, legal visits between counsel and plaintiffs and class members are instead conducted in the general visitation room, with dozens of other prisoners, attorneys, nonattorney visitors, and correctional employees present,” the lawsuit says. “Taking into account the fact that parole board and state board clemency investigators, among others, use these same booths [as the lawyers] to communicate with prisoners, it is unsurprising that plaintiffs feel they are unable to speak freely with their counsel.”
Female death row inmates in Texas are imprisoned in a separate facility and are not part of the proposed class, the lawsuit says.
“The conditions on death row in Texas have been characterized as some of the most brutal death row conditions in the country,” Hogan Lovells lead lawyer Pieter Van Tol said. “The plaintiffs in this case are seeking relief from conditions that have been described as torture.”
Van Tol, a partner in Hogan Lovells’ New York office, successfully led a settlement in an earlier case that challenged the placement of all death row inmates in Angola prison in Louisiana. The terms of that case settlement included an agreement by officials to minimum congregate time for outdoor recreation, meals and religious worship.
The Hogan Lovells team on the Texas death row case also includes counsel Catherine Bratic and associates Sydney Rupe and Chloe Warnberg of the firm’s Houston office and associate Jack Shaked of the firm’s New York office.
The cause number is 4:23-cv-00283 in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Texas.