Conditions for isolated death row inmates at Louisiana State Penitentiary will improve as a result of a recent settlement of a 2017 class-action lawsuit that alleged conditions there were cruel and unusual.
A settlement of the lawsuit brought by three inmates who were confined for up to 23 hours per day at the Angola prison was disclosed in court documents filed in the Middle District of Louisiana. The prison’s previous solitary confinement policy for those sentenced to death affected about 70 inmates, according to the settlement.
By May of 2017, the penitentiary had already begun relaxing the solitary confinement policy by allowing the inmates some daily communal time with fellow death row inmates and more time outside in the prison yard, the Sept. 28 settlement states.
“It is important for Louisiana and other states to evolve in this direction to provide even more social and recreational opportunities for people on death row,” Betsy Ginsberg, director of the Civil Rights Clinic at Cardozo School of Law in New York, who represented the plaintiffs, told the Louisiana Record.
A number of other states continue to hold death row inmates in 23-hour daily confinement, according to Ginsberg. Agreements such as the one in Louisiana have broad implications for the health and well-being of death row inmates, she said.
“To the credit of officials at Angola, as we have negotiated the terms of the agreement, they began to implement them pretty immediately,” Ginsberg said. “... There are people who have been on death row in those conditions before we filed the case for decades."
The agreement allows inmates to congregate in common areas outside of their cells for two hours in the morning and two hours in the afternoon, with some out-of-cell time provided in the evenings as well, the settlement says. The death row prisoners will also be given five hours of yard time in groups over the course of at least three days per week.
In addition, prison officials have agreed to equip the prison yard with a basketball court, benches for weightlifting and a grass area that is 48 feet by 20 feet.
Under the terms of the accord, inmates will be provided the opportunity for worship at least one time per week and the chance to complete General Education Development courses.
Executions at the prison are not common, according to Ginsberg, who said the last one occurred about a decade ago.