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Exonerated Prisoners Speak out on Solitary Confinement
Posted: June 19, 2012 2:45 pm
At a Senate Judiciary Subcommittee hearing today exploring solitary confinement as inhumane treatment, a death row exoneree testified, and six others submitted written testimony. Anthony Graves spent 18 years in Texas prisons for a murder he didn’t commit. Graves testified to the horrors of his experience of extreme isolation: “Solitary confinement makes our criminal justice system criminal….It dehumanizes us all.”
The Innocence Project also submitted testimony from just a few of the many exonerated people who spent time in solitary confinement. Julie Rea, of Illinois, describes being tormented by an audio cassette of a women screaming; Nick Yarris, of Pennsylvania’s death row, tells of his own suicide attempt during his 23 years in solitary confinement; and Clarence Elkins describes being numb while being released because he had endured three months of solitary confinement just before his exoneration.
Read their testimony.
For more about the Senate Judiciary hearing.