573 Days

573 days. That’s how long our client spent in isolation in a federal prison. 

23 hours a day. His only contact with the outside world was a single 15 minute phone call with family once a month. 

He did not know why he was in solitary confinement. He was repeatedly told by Bureau of Prisoners (BOP) staff at the prison that he was being held subject to a Department of Justice Inspector General (DOJ IG) investigation. But more than a year passed and he still had not been interviewed or subjected to any other investigative protocol. 

His requests to access his file were denied, as were his requests to meet with the review board.  

While he was seeking answers, the BOP Director was on Capitol Hill promoting an amendment to the Code of Federal Regulations that would prohibit disciplinary segregation in excess of 60 days. The recommendation came on the heels of a February 2024 BOP report which found that almost half of prison suicides occur in restricted housing, indicating the tremendous and detrimental toll of segregation on inmate mental health.

This recognition is overdue. Article 5 of the United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights states "[n]o one shall be subjected to torture or to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment or punishment." The United Nations Standard Minimum Rules for the Treatment of Prisoners prohibits solitary confinement in excess of 15 consecutive days. 

We were brought into the case with a simple ask: would we write one letter to the DOJ IG and try to find out what is going on? Perhaps a legal inquiry would be taken more seriously than outreach from family members and various non-profits.

If we knew how to add footnotes to a blog post, we would add one here. But we don't, so we're going to digress for a moment to say that if we had a nickel for every time a Just One Letter case did not, in fact, get resolved with Just One Letter, we'd be handling all of our cases pro bono.

If you're in for writing one letter, you're in for the whole ride. Wherever it leads.

Despite our wariness, we sent a letter to the DOJ IG addressing our concerns about our client's prolonged confinement and asking them to confirm that our client was the subject of an ongoing investigation. We copied BOP on the letter. Both agencies replied within days of each other. DOJ IG told us there was no investigation. Go talk to BOP, they said. BOP doubled down on their prior assertion that the client was being held in isolation pending the resolution of an ongoing DOJ IG investigation.

But don't worry, BOP said, we're taking good care of him.

We sent another letter to both agencies, the gist of which was “who’s on first?” We included each agency's response to our prior letter to make sure they knew that we knew that neither agency knew what the hell was going on.

Not surprisingly, there was no response. So we talked to the press. We talked to prison lobbyists and BOP consultants and friends on Capitol Hill.  

Around this time, our client’s case counselor stopped responding to our scheduling requests for legal calls. In desperation and wondering if he’d been abandoned by his legal team, our client filed a pro se habeas corpus petition under 28 U.S.C. 2241, which allows prisoners in the federal system to challenge the execution of their sentence, including the conditions of their confinement. By the time we found out he'd filed it, the time to cure a deficiency in the initial pleading had come and gone. Our client had never even seen the deficiency notice. It was signed for by the prison but never delivered to him. 

Realizing the case was at imminent risk of dismissal, we decided we would enter an appearance, amend the habeas petition, and attach our correspondence with the BOP and DOJ IG as exhibits. Maybe having their incompetence aired in court would motivate the government to take our client's situation seriously.

We scrambled to get local counsel in the jurisdiction where the case was pending. We reached out to anyone we could think of who might know something about this type of habeas petition. Our law school professors, post-conviction attorneys, friends. They all told us as much as they knew and connected us with others who might know more. Everyone we spoke to was incredulous and appalled by the duration of our client's isolation and the government's response. They all wanted to help. 

We prepped the filing and were ready to go. At the eleventh hour, we heard from our friends on the Hill: our client was being moved out of segregated housing and would be placed with the general population at a new facility. BOP never acknowledged why they finally relented, but it didn't matter. Something we'd done had worked.

A few days later we got a message from the client through the internal prison email system. He was relieved to be out of isolation and utterly grateful for our efforts on his behalf. And that was that.

But the question remains: how was this allowed to happen? Why was a man subjected to disciplinary isolation for 573 days without so much as an explanation?

Indifference. Not intent or malice, just utter indifference to solving a problem no one was even willing to acknowledge existed.

It is a dangerous situation when power rests in the hands of people and organizations that are fundamentally indifferent. But the good news is that decisions driven by indifference rarely withstand the efforts of those determined to challenge and change the outcome.

As lawyers, determination is a characteristic we can't turn off (for better or worse). We are unrelenting in the pursuit of the causes and clients we represent. When one avenue doesn’t work, we find another approach. We prep the filings, we make the calls, we study the judges, we go down caselaw rabbit holes, scour dockets, and dig through legislative records. We build an army, sometimes not knowing what battle we are walking into.

We walked away from this case with a renewed self-awareness around our willingness to do whatever it takes. The generosity we received from our colleagues taught us a lot about the kind of lawyers we want to be and the kind of lawyers we want in our community. We were fortunate that so many people took this situation as seriously as we did and encouraged us to keep pushing. Being supported by lawyers who love and believe in this work -- the tough battles, the good fights - as much as we do is a gift and a privilege that will never be lost on us.