Resource: Prieto v. Clarke

Prieto was one of just eight inmates out of the 39,000 in the custody of the Virginia Department of Corrections who had been permanently assigned to solitary confinement. As a result of that assignment, Prieto and the other inmates in his situation (i.e., those on death row) spent 23 hours or more a day alone in a 71-square foot cell for the past seven years, deprived of almost all human contact. Despite describing Prieto’s conditions as “undeniably severe,” the United States Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit, in a divided decision, ruled that Prieto had no right to review his automatic assignment to solitary confinement, as he could not establish a protected liberty interest within any state statute, regulation, or policy. As Judge Wynn’s dissent recognized, this ruling required Prieto—and other inmates like him—to remain in the severe and harsh conditions of solitary confinement without even the “minimalist [of] procedural safeguards.”