Docket William Thorpe v. Harold Clarke Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit

Virginia Prisons Accountability Committee · William Thorpe v. Harold Clarke Court of Appeals for the 4 Circuit Solitary Confinement

Docket William Thorpe v. Harold Clarke
Court of Appeals for the Fourth Circuit
Date Argued: January 25th, 2022
Duration: 48:49
Docket Number: 21-1714
Judges: Henry Franklin Floyd, Roger L. Gregory, Stephanie Dawn
Thacker
This item represents an oral argument audio file as scraped from a U.S. Government website by Free Law Project.

THORPE, ET AL. V. VIRGINIA DEPARTMENT OF CORRECTIONS, ET AL.

 Original Content created by ACLU of Virginia 

The ACLU of Virginia, [Follow link for complete up to date PDF files to follow this case] in collaboration with the law firm of White & Case LLP, filed a federal class-action lawsuit against the Virginia Department of Corrections (VDOC) seeking to end the practice of solitary confinement in two of its most notorious prisons.

The lawsuit was filed in the U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Virginia on behalf of people who have suffered in torturous conditions, some for decades, at Red Onion and Wallen's Ridge state prisons. It was transferred to the U.S. District Court for the Western District of Virginia in April of 2020. Both facilities are super maximum-security prisons located in the far southwest corner of the state that were designed to hold people in near-constant isolation and deprivation.

Solitary confinement, the practice of keeping someone alone in a small space for 22 hours or more per day with little to no stimulation or human contact, is known to cause mental and physical deterioration in as little as 10 days. The lengths of stay in solitary confinement of the 12 named plaintiffs in the case range from two to 24 years.

The lawsuit describes VDOC’s use of a complex, arbitrary system – known as the Step-Down Program – purportedly intended to help people work their way out of solitary. The lawsuit alleges that in practice, the Step-Down Program has kept hundreds of people in solitary confinement at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge. The lawsuit further alleges that officials administer the program in violation of the constitutional rights of those being held and with indifference to the suffering and harm being inflicted.

In the lawsuit, the plaintiffs allege that VDOC built Red Onion and Wallens Ridge – and instituted the Step-Down Program – after settling a previous class-action lawsuit about solitary confinement at Mecklenburg Correctional Center, which closed in 2012. In the 1984 settlement agreement, VDOC promised never again to reinstate the type of program or conditions at Mecklenburg; yet it did so and continues to do so at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge without notifying the court or the plaintiffs in the previous case as was required.

The lawsuit alleges the current Step-Down Program is nearly identical to a “Phase Program” used at Mecklenburg, which an independent study commission formed by the state government determined VDOC was using to divert people from other state facilities and inappropriately keep them in solitary at Mecklenburg.

The lawsuit alleges under VDOC’s current Step-Down Program, people who are subjectively classified by correctional officers as being a security risk based on vague criteria and without due process may be placed in solitary confinement. Once there, it is nearly impossible for many to navigate the labyrinth of requirements to be released into general population.

Some are kept in solitary for infractions as minimal as not shaving their beard, using disrespectful language, or refusing to stand for count, while others are placed and kept in solitary because they cannot meet the program’s journaling requirements, according to the lawsuit. Still others are in solitary because of behaviors related to mental illness even though solitary confinement itself exacerbates and even causes mental illness.

The lawsuit seeks to end the Step-Down Program, close the solitary confinement units at Red Onion and Wallens Ridge, and appoint a special master to bring VDOC’s prisons into compliance. It also seeks to award the plaintiffs compensatory damages for these violations.

 ATTORNEY(S)

Vishal Agraharkar and Eden Heilman, ACLU of Virginia

PRO BONO LAW FIRM(S)

White and Case

 

DATE FILED

MAY 6, 2019

COURT

Western District of Virginia, Big Stone Gap Division

JUDGE

James P. Jones

STATUS

Filed

CASE NUMBER

2:20-cv-000007

We at vapac thank ACLU  & White and Case for all they do. gratitude.....

 

  

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Prison Reform In Virginia and The Richmond Catholic Diocese Office Of Social Ministries By William Thorpe

On April 4th, 2019; The Catholic Virginian announced that the Virginian Catholic Diocese out of Richmond, Virginia was committing $10k to prison outreach out of its Office of Social Ministry. As a Virginia prisoner now exiled to a Texas Prison Solitary Confinement cell, I didn't applaud nor recognize the declaration then nor do I applaud it now, neither am I simplistically being critical of the Richmond Dioceses entrance into prison reform in Virginia.

What I however state is despite the enormous historical harm, destruction and violence the Catholic Church and its thought has wrought and unleashed on the human condition. It stands that redemption for both the church as an institution and prison and imprisonment as a social and political exercise is the willingness to side with the transparency of institutional accountability. Meaning the query of reform as a realized and mature fact.

The Commonwealth of Virginia recently abolished its use of the death penalty, a use that was racist and arbitrary. Nor was it's dismissal based on any truism save political will      because its reactionary Republican and hypocritical white-evangelical Christian supporters who saw its imposition and use as means to the end of attaining speculative political power haven't relinquished, surrendered nor abandoned its utility as a political weapon. To wit, Donald Trump, a defeated and trounced in his refection bid, Republican President who was obscenely supported across the board by white     Evangelical Christians and corporate and Conservative Catholics, deploying the death penalty and its killing of prisoners as a spectacle, a blood lust orgy, compromising whatever remnant of judgment his supporters had, during the last days of his presidency. A deed so savage in its presumptions and anticipations that were Roman Caesar's who perfected the use of blood lust orgies resurrected with all their pagan sensibilities we would see them recoiling from the cowardice of the killings     yet was there an uproar and Ecclesiastic condemnation from the Catholic Church.

The Church despite its historicity of contradictions stands as subject and object of accountability. So yes, the work of prison reform recognizes the role the Catholic Church can play, when it reconciles its hypocrisies and is true to its mission. Because doesn't society claim that the validation of what in practice is nothing less than crass suppositions has its font from the church and its thought?

The church has the authority to demand accountability and transparency of the institutionalization of justice and the work of prison reform ask for it.

I'm in solitary confinement at the J.D. Wainwright Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice.

vapac

The October 20, 2021 Moon, A Pregnant full Moon Aries Moon and A Wife's Kiss to Her Husband In Solitary Confinement By Stacey Thorpe

 

Stacey & Sporty

💘❤💘❤💘

Sporty you should see the pregnant full Aries Moon tonight. Its exceptionally gorgeous. Its radiance is Amazing.

I think it's an Aries Moon...My Moon...I can't wait until we're under it's brilliance. I Hunger for you.

Baby you know what the moon does to folks. it puts fire under their feet in some, heat in the mouths of others and peak energy and culminating events in the many.

So whats going on there? I Love You Sweetheart. Baby I trust your main event is you heard from me, a letter and our jpay I sent yesterday has you full of me tonight and you're doing A Moondance instead of experiencing Moon Madness.

💘❤💘❤💘

My name is Sporty [William Thorpe] and I'm in Solitary Confinement at the Wainwright Unit of the Texas Department of Criminal Justice exiled from the Virginia Department of Corrections and I am sharing the above gem from my Wife Stacey And Yes Solitary Confinement is A Cruel and Unusual Punishment  Violative of the natural law and the 8th Amendment of the Constitution of the United States, created by the Mood Madded.

By Stacey and William Thorpe