A lawsuit filed in April 2018 on behalf of two Oregon prisoners alleging unconstitutional use of solitary confinement by Oregon Department of Corrections was dismissed in federal court last week, but it’s not over yet, according to the plaintiffs’ attorney.
Juan Chavez, a civil rights lawyer with the Oregon Justice Resource Center, told Street Roots he plans to file an amended complaint this summer, an opportunity Magistrate Judge Stacie Beckerman afforded him in her decision to dismiss.
Chavez said he thinks Beckerman’s June 20 opinion “actually laid out a plan for us to properly allege enough additional facts to get past this hurdle.”
Also representing the prisoners is Brooklyn-based attorney Crystal Maloney.
The case, presided over in Portland’s federal district court, claimed Oregon Department of Corrections staff fabricated evidence and unlawfully used solitary confinement in order to punish two inmates without due process.
The plaintiffs, prisoners Shane Staggs and Rafael Mora-Contreras, were featured in a 2017 Street Roots report on the use of solitary confinement at Oregon State Penitentiary, a state-run maximum-security prison in Salem, in 2017.
Both men were employed within the prison and in good standing when they were placed in solitary confinement for extended periods while under investigation for separate nonviolent infractions.
Their complaint mirrored allegations outlined in Street Roots coverage, which revealed a pattern of bad practices at Oregon State Penitentiary with regard to its use of solitary confinement and the internal investigations into inmate misconduct that lands prisoners in it, often for long periods of time.
Both plaintiffs and other inmates involved in the case allege a former DOC employee, Lt. Douglas Yancey, attempted to bribe and coerce inmates into submitting false testimony against the plaintiffs and retaliated against inmates by placing them in solitary confinement.
Beckerman stated in her order on the defendants’ motion to dismiss that although a case earlier this year determined prisoners have a right not to be coerced into submitting false information as an informant, the ruling does not apply to this case because the misconduct pre-dated that court ruling.
Additionally, Beckerman found that because Mora-Contreras now sits in Washington County Jail while the murder case that landed him in prison is re-tried, his request for relief is moot. She also based her dismissal on established precedent that solitary confinement in and of itself is not a violation of the Eighth Amendment right to be free from cruel and unusual punishment, stating that the plaintiffs failed to plead the facts necessary to support their constitutional claims.
“It’s a fine line because so often, we feel these cases should be obvious based on the facts, but the courts do require enough facts to allege a possible claim,” Chavez said. He’ll have to show that the confinement was atypical.
“I think the court also acknowledges that the science is changing. And we have a better understanding of what solitary does to the mind, to the spirit and to rehabilitation,” Chavez said.
The end to solitary confinement in U.S. prisons will likely be piecemeal, happening state by state, Chavez said, pointing to a recent legislative vote in New Jersey to limit confinement to 15 days. In 2017, Colorado also ended the use of solitary confinement beyond 15 days, with the state’s director of corrections saying the practice “too often amounted to torture and did not make anyone safer.”
The U.N.-accepted Nelson Mandela Rules on the Treatment of Prisoners defines solitary confinement of more than 15 days as torture.
A bill to limit confinement in New York failed to pass last week with an agreement to make changes administratively advancing in its place. Those changes including capping confinement at 30 days and prohibiting the confinement of minors, pregnant women and disabled prisoners.
A bill introduced in Oregon this session to ban long-term solitary confinement at adult facilities has had no public hearing or vote. In 2017, Oregon ended the use of solitary confinement at its youth correctional facilities.
FURTHER READING: The ‘heart-wrenching’ youth detention conditions at a federal jail in The Dalles
Because Beckerman is a magistrate judge, her opinion on this case is awaiting approval from District Judge Michael Simon.
The plaintiffs have been notified of the dismissal, and Chavez said their plan is to keep fighting.
Email Senior Staff Reporter Emily Green at emily@streetroots.org. Follow her on Twitter @greenwrites.