On Monday, the United States Supreme Court refused to consider an Illinois inmate’s appeal of his confinement conditions.
Michael Johnson’s lawyers argued that keeping him in solitary confinement for three years violated the Constitution’s prohibition of cruel and unusual punishment. Johnson has been classified as seriously mentally ill.
He had multiple conduct violations and accrued nearly three and a half years in solitary confinement before being transferred to a mental health unit in 2016.
“He suffered from hallucinations, excoriated his own flesh, urinated and defecated on himself, and smeared feces all over his body and cell,” Justice Katanji Brown Jackson wrote in dissent.
Illinois Attorney General Kwame Raoul defended the confinement, writing that Johnson regularly met with doctors and mental health professionals supplied by the prison healthcare provider.
Lawyers for Johnson responded that “the deprivation was not imposed to ensure the safety and security of the exercise yard, but rather to punish Mr. Johnson for engaging in misconduct that was born of mental illness and unrelated to exercise.”
