[Deathpenalty] death penalty news----TENN., S.DAK., ARIZ., NEV., ORE., USA

[Rick Halperin]

October 2



TENNESSEE:

One of RICO defendants facing death penalty pleads not guilty



Courtney High, 1 of the 3 men facing the death penalty for the 2016 death of a 
state's witness, pleaded not guilty Monday.

During a reading of the charges, Hamilton County District Attorney General Neal 
Pinkston said High conspired with 2 other men, Andre Grier and Charles Shelton, 
to kidnap and kill a state's witness in May 2016. At the time, witness Bianca 
Horton planned to testify against Cortez Sims, who, at 17, opened fire in a 
College Hill Courts apartment, killing 20-year-old Talitha Bowman, injuring 
Horton and a 2nd man and paralyzing Horton's then nearly 2-year-old child.

(source: Times Free Press)








SOUTH DAKOTA:

SD Supreme Court Hears Death Row Inmate's Case



The murder of Chester Allan Poage remains one of the grisliest crimes in South 
Dakota, and now the man convicted of killing him is fighting his death 
sentence. The South Dakota Supreme Court is hearing Briley Piper's case. Piper 
and two other men were charged with first degree murder in 2000 for beating 
Poage to death. Piper pleaded guilty, and a circuit court judge sentenced him 
to death, instead of a jury. Now his attorney says Piper got bad advice from 
his previous attorneys.

6 years ago, Poage's mother said the pain of her son's murder is still with 
her.

"You know, my son's life was cut way too short. He was never able to marry and 
have children, to give me grandchildren. That's something that I can only 
vision in my mind. What if?" Dottie Poage said in 2012.

Now South Dakota Supreme Court justices have a different question to answer. 
Did Piper have bad legal advice when he said no to a jury trial to decide if he 
should get the death penalty.

"We know Briley Piper did not adequately understand the consequences of his 
guilty plea when he walked in in 2001," Ryan Kolbeck, Piper's attorney, said.

Piper's attorney wants the Supreme Court to remand the case, meaning send it 
back to court for a new trial.

"I know that sounds drastic. I know that sounds crazy in 2018 to go back to 
2001, but if due process means anything, if the advisement of rights means 
anything, that must occur," Kolbeck said.

"The torture inflicted on Chester Allen Poage was unprecedented in this state's 
history," Paul Swedlund, Assistant Attorney General, said.

Swedlund is arguing against a new trial, and says there's no evidence Piper was 
misinformed.

"He knew what he wanted. He wanted a court sentencing. He raced into the 
courthouse to be the first of his trio to plead guilty so he could appear to 
accept responsibility," Swedlund said.

This is the 3rd time Piper's case has been in front of the Supreme Court. He 
applied for a writ of habeas corpus in 2006, arguing he was not properly 
informed of his right to have a jury decide whether to impose the death. The 
Supreme Court agreed and the case went back to circuit court for re-sentencing 
by a jury. The jury upheld his death penalty. The Supreme Court reviewed this 
case again In 2011, and affirmed his death sentence.

The Supreme Court will decide this case at a later date.

(source: keloland.com)








ARIZONA----foreign national/female facing death penalty

'They're excellent parents': Australian woman facing death penalty in US over 
death of stepdaughter



An Australian woman facing the death penalty in the US over the death of her 
stepdaughter was let down by the health system, the woman's lawyer claims.

Former South Australian resident Lisa Cunningham, 44, and her husband, former 
police detective Germayne Cunningham, have pleaded not guilty to 11 charges, 
including f1t-degree murder and child abuse, in the US state of Arizona.

Mr Cunningham's daughter Sanaa, 7, died in February 2017, with an autopsy 
finding the cause of death to be sepsis related to a chest infection, an 
abscess in her right foot and multiple skin ulcers. It was also noted the child 
had an unspecified schizophrenia spectrum disorder.

Court documents allege the couple shut Sanaa in their backyard, laundry and 
garage, forced her to sleep outside, restrained her with cable ties and failed 
to seek medical care.

In August the Maricopa County Court ruled that both adults were eligible for 
the death penalty, remanding them in jail.

In an exclusive interview with 7.30, Ms Cunningham's lawyer Eric Kessler said 
the couple had tried their best with Sanaa but were overwhelmed by her mental 
illnesses.

"Sanaa presented with very difficult medical, emotional and psychiatric issues. 
They sought professional care in all of those fields. Even when they had 
limited funds, they nonetheless continued to find a solution for Sanaa," Mr 
Kessler said.

Mr Kessler said the family had been let down by the system.

"If even one medical professional or mental health professional had properly 
diagnosed this child and given appropriate instructions to Lisa and Germayne to 
deal with Sanaa's true problems, then I don't believe we would have a deceased 
child," he said.

Mr and Ms Cunningham each had 2 children from previous relationships, then had 
2 children together.

"Lisa loved Sanaa as though Sanaa was her own," Mr Kessler said.

"I can see from their other children who are well-adjusted and healthy ... so I 
take from that that they're excellent parents."

It will be 2 years before the case goes to trial.

Ms Cunningham is currently being held in Estrella, a women's jail in Phoenix.

Text messages allegedly reveal daughter was tied up

Prosecutors paint a very different picture of the Cunninghams.

7.30 has obtained police detective's Noah Yeo's harrowing court testimony about 
Sanaa's home life and mental health.

"Ms Cunningham expressed to us that Sanaa had been self-harming ... she used to 
restrain Sanaa. What she described as protecting her, was to place a 
long-sleeved sweater around her arms, similar to a straitjacket style, where 
her arms were crossed over her chest," the detective said in court.

Text messages between Mr Cunningham and Ms Cunningham are key to the 
prosecution's case.

"In these text messages they specifically talked about being fed up with Sanaa 
and putting her in a garage and zip-tying her to a large water container," the 
detective told the court.

The detective also told the court what he saw during the autopsy.

"Sanaa Cunningham, from my observations, had cuts, bruises, scarring to the 
bottom of her feet, to the top of her head, over her entire body," the 
detective said.

The court heard the Cunninghams were concerned about the effects of an 
anti-psychotic medication a doctor prescribed for Sanaa in the leadup to her 
death.

Ms Cunningham's lawyer told 7.30 "they never intended any harm for this child".

"In fact they went out of their way, and through extraordinary means sought 
help from any number of sources, whether it be from the government, private 
medical facilities and so forth.

"Towards the end, just shortly before Sanaa died, she saw medical professionals 
whose evaluation and treatment is suspect."

'Prosecutors said the defence is a pack of lies'

Arizona in America's south west - best known for the Grand Canyon - is 1 of the 
31 US states that still has capital punishment.

Phoenix-based freelance journalist Sean Holstege said the state prided itself 
on a hard-line approach to law and order.

"Currently Arizona has 117 people on death row. If Arizona puts Lisa Cunningham 
to death as a result of a successful conviction in this case, she would be the 
first Australian woman ever executed in the United States," he told 7.30.

The Cunninghams were indicted in December last year.

"Prosecutors have said that the defence is a pack of lies, frankly," Mr 
Holstege said.

"They have said the Cunninghams have tried to manipulate the record and 
manipulate the diagnoses. They went doctor shopping, is the term that they used 
in court."

The charges come amidst a series of child protection failings in Phoenix, and 
questions about whether Mr Cunningham's job as a police officer initially 
afforded him special treatment, and later made him a target.

"The 1st official record that Sanaa was having any problems at all came in 
April 2016, and that is when somebody reported suspicions of neglect," Mr 
Holstege said.

"Germayne Cunningham showed them all the medical records suggesting that he was 
trying to do something about that condition, and they concluded that he was and 
basically closed the case."

Lawyer Mr Kessler said Ms Cunningham believed the charges "are not the kind of 
charges that would normally be brought against parents, but that there may be 
other factors at play here, be they political or otherwise, that resulted in 
the government bringing these charges".

Ms Cunningham's lawyers are seeking help from the Australian Government to 
defend the case with financial aid, which has been given to other citizens 
facing serious charges abroad.

"The Australian Government has not been terribly receptive," Mr Kessler said.

"We're in the process of trying to schedule meetings with the Australian 
Government so at this point I can't criticise their efforts."

The Attorney-General's Department declined to comment.

(source: abc.net.au)








NEVADA:

Las Vegas Strip killer of 3 appeals death-penalty conviction



Prosecutors should not have been allowed to show jurors photographs of the 
charred bodies of a cab driver and his passenger, defense attorneys for 
convicted killer Ammar Harris argued Monday before the Nevada Supreme Court.

Defense attorney Robert Langford said the rush to take Harris' case to trial 
and a judge making a late-night decision to admit certain crime scene photos 
were "emblematic of a problem."

Langford said the photographs of the victims - who were killed after a fatal 
shooting led to a crash and explosion on the Las Vegas Strip - inflamed the 
passions of jurors and resulted in a conviction on 3 counts of 1st-degree 
murder for Harris, who was sentenced to die by the same jury that found him 
guilty in October 2015. District Judge Kathleen Delaney allowed the pictures as 
evidence at trial without issuing a record of how she made her decision, 
Langford argued.

Prosecutors said Harris left Haze nightclub at Aria in the pre-dawn hours of 
Feb. 21, 2013, after a quarrel. He drove alongside Kenneth Cherry Jr.'s car on 
the Strip and fired a bullet that plowed through the 27-year-old's vital 
organs, killing him. Cherry's Maserati then slammed into a taxi, causing an 
explosion that killed driver Michael Boldon, 62, and his passenger, Sandra 
Sutton-Wasmund, 48, a mother of 3 from Washington. A passenger in Cherry's 
Maserati suffered a minor gunshot wound.

Chief Deputy District Attorney David Stanton argued that the photographs were 
used to show the cause and manner of death for Boldon and Sutton-Wasmund.

"Their deaths were graphic," Stanton argued, "and there's no other way to show 
that."

During a sentencing phase of his trial, Harris refused to appear in court for 3 
days of testimony and argument. Jurors found 10 aggravating factors that 
contributed to his punishment and no mitigating circumstances that should have 
spared his life. Harris later was sentenced to an additional 16 to 40 years in 
prison on related charges.

Another one of Harris' attorneys, Thomas Ericsson, also argued that jurors 
should have been able to weigh voluntary manslaughter charges against Harris. A 
verdict form was delivered to jurors before defense attorneys and prosecutors 
reviewed it, Ericsson said.

Justice Michael Cherry asked whether attorneys hired an investigator to find 
out if jurors considered why the possible charge did not appear on the verdict 
form. Ericsson said no, but he said the high court should grant Harris' appeal 
based on "cumulative errors" during his trial.

(source: Las Vegas Review-Journal)








OREGON:

Man convicted of murdering Springfield boat builder in 2000 returns to court



More than 18 years after being sentenced to death for murdering a Springfield 
man in 1993, Jeffrey Dale Tiner returned to Lane County Circuit Court on 
Monday.

Tiner, now 60, is back in court because both his aggravated murder conviction 
and death sentence have been overturned. A conviction for intentional murder - 
a lesser homicide charge that carries a life sentence - remains intact.

A new trial on the aggravated murder charges is scheduled for February, 
although his attorneys on Monday argued before Judge Charles Zennache that they 
need additional time to prepare a defense. Prosecutors, however, say the 
lawyers have represented Tiner in post-conviction matters for a decade and 
shouldn't need more time.

Zennache didn't rule Monday on the defense's bid to reschedule Tiner's trial, 
and similarly will wait to rule on a defense request to allow Tiner to continue 
to be held in the Oregon State Penitentiary in Salem until his trial begins.

Although his death sentence has been overturned, Tiner continues to reside on 
the prison's "death row," which is reserved for inmates convicted of aggravated 
murder and awaiting execution.

He apparently wants to stay there, at least for now. Defense attorney Andy 
Simrin told Zennache that Tiner is "comfortable" at the penitentiary and 
perhaps the only reason to move him to the Lane County Jail before the trial 
starts would be to "harass" him.

Lane County Assistant District Attorney Erik Hasselman, however, said Tiner 
should be treated like any other local defendant and be held at the jail in the 
coming months.

"That's what we do with people when they are pending trial," Hasselman said in 
court.

Zennache said he will speak with Lane County sheriff's officials about the 
situation before ruling on the motion. Also unresolved is a request from 
Tiner's lawyers to withdraw from the case for an unspecified conflict of 
interest that another judge will decide. If Tiner is given new attorneys, it's 
expected that his trial will be postponed.

Tiner on Monday was escorted into court by 3 Oregon Department of Corrections 
transport officers who brought him to Eugene from the Salem prison. He returned 
to prison after the hearing.

Tiner was condemned to death for the 1993 murder of Springfield boat builder 
James Salmu. A Lane County jury in 2000 found Tiner guilty of charges including 
intentional murder and aggravated murder in the case.

Salmu had been missing 20 months before a mushroom hunter found his skeletal 
remains in a forest more than 50 miles east of Springfield. Authorities said 
Salmu, 34, had been beaten, stabbed and shot before his body was buried in the 
woods.

Both Tiner and his then-girlfriend, Karlyn Eklof, were convicted in Salmu's 
death. Prosecutors assert the killing happened when Tiner and Eklof attacked 
Salmu after arguing with him about wanting to be left alone at his home. Salmu 
had allowed Eklof - who had been homeless - and her children to live with him 
in the months before he died.

Tiner's death sentence was overturned in 2011 when a judge ruled he was not 
given a proper defense during the sentencing phase of his trial in 2000.

The Oregon Court of Appeals in March 2017 also sided with Tiner, ruling that 
Lane County prosecutors had wrongly withheld witness impeachment evidence from 
Tiner’s attorneys before his trial.

That evidence included a letter to prosecutors from one of their counterparts 
in Nevada, who indicated two state witnesses in Tiner’s trial were strongly 
biased against him; and the fact that a prosecutor had promised to write a 
letter to a parole board on behalf of one of the witnesses, in exchange for her 
testimony against Tiner.

A post-conviction court subsequently directed Lane County officials to retry 
Tiner for aggravated murder.

Two inmates have died via lethal injection since Oregon voters reinstated 
capital punishment in 1984. The state last carried out an execution in 1997. 
Former Gov. John Kitzhaber announced a state moratorium on capital punishment 
in 2011, and it has continued under his successor, Gov. Kate Brown.

(source: The Register-Guard)








USA:

"Dead Man Walking," Revisited: A Prophetic Argument Against Capital Punishment



In January of 1982, Sister Helen Prejean became a pen pal to Elmo Patrick 
Sonnier, a death-row inmate who had been convicted, with his brother, of 
abducting a teen-age couple from a lover's lane, raping the woman, and shooting 
her and her partner in the back of the head. Sonnier was sentenced to death for 
the crime; his brother received a life sentence. As Prejean writes in "Dead Man 
Walking," first published 25 years ago, she is repulsed by his actions, but 
through their steady correspondence she cannot help but also think of him as a 
fellow human being. Soon she is not only exchanging letters with him, but 
visiting him in prison, where she learns that, although he was involved in the 
crime, it was his brother who committed the murders. When the date for his 
execution is set, Sister Helen agrees to become his spiritual advisor. She 
convinces lawyers to take his case, and meets the parents of his victims, who 
are eager to see the murderer of their children pay the ultimate price of 
"justice."

As Prejean makes clear in "Dead Man Walking," at the root of this nation's 
commitment to justice is a belief that suffering is redemptive, especially when 
that suffering is inflicted by the state. "An eye for an eye" is the phrase 
Prejean hears each time she pleads for Sonnier’s life to be spared. It is 
repeated back to her not only by the victims' parents but by the governor, the 
warden of the prison, the head of the Department of Corrections, the District 
Attorney, and the chair of the Pardon Board, who refuses to stay Sonnier's 
execution. "Indeed," Justice Stewart wrote in the majority opinion in Gregg v. 
Georgia - the case, from 1976, that ended a national moratorium on executions 
and reinstated the death penalty - "certain crimes are themselves so grievous 
an affront to humanity that the only adequate response may be the penalty of 
death." Violence, according to this view, cleanses the world of violence. 
Murder becomes justice only when we do not call it murder.

The tidy symmetry of "an eye for an eye" might appeal in theory, but Prejean 
makes clear that it is barbaric in practice. In 1984, in Louisiana's Angola 
prison, the preferred method of capital punishment is electrocution, but 
whether an execution occurs by way of hanging, firing squad, gas chamber, the 
electric chair, or lethal injection, and despite all efforts to make capital 
punishment "humane," there is, as Prejean writes, "one dimension of suffering 
that can never be eliminated": "the horror of being put to death against your 
will and the agony of anticipation." There is nothing "humane" about taking 
another person's life, she argues. It is nothing less than torture, and 
certainly nothing more.

When the date of his execution arrives, Elmo Patrick Sonnier is fed his last 
meal and shaved - his head, eyebrows, and one of his legs - before he is 
diapered and led to the execution chamber in chains. He steps onto a podium to 
utter his last words, a plea for forgiveness, which plays through a speaker in 
the next room, where Sister Helen is seated among those watching the execution 
through a Plexiglas window. A team of guards secures Sonnier to the electric 
chair with leather straps. A metal cap is placed over his head; electrodes are 
attached to the cap and to his shaved leg. Another leather strap secures his 
chin, and a gray cloth covers his face. Sister Helen finds she cannot watch, 
and closes her eyes as 3 pulses of electricity enter his body: 1900 volts, 500 
volts, then 1900 volts. A doctor rises from where he is seated to perform "the 
final check." She opens her eyes. Elmo Patrick Sonnier is dead.

In 1993, "Dead Man Walking" spent 31 weeks on the New York Times best-seller 
list. The book was translated into ten languages, became a feature film 
starring Susan Sarandon as Sister Helen (a role for which she won the Academy 
Award for Best Actress), and, more importantly, ignited a national debate about 
capital punishment. Since then, public opinion about the death penalty has 
shifted. A Gallup poll conducted in 1991, 2 years before the book's release, 
showed that 76% of respondents approved of the death penalty for a person 
convicted of murder; in 2017, the most recent assessment, that number had 
dropped to 55 %. Since 1993, 7 states - New Jersey, New York, New Mexico, 
Illinois, Connecticut, Maryland, and Delaware - have overturned the death 
penalty, and the governors of 4 more - Oregon, Colorado, Washington, and 
Pennsylvania - have placed moratoria on executions.

But elsewhere, in places like Texas, where I live, we have made somewhat less 
progress. On July 17th of this year, the state executed Chris Young for his 
part in a failed robbery of a gas station and the shooting death of its 
attendant, Hasmukh Patel. At the time of the shooting, Young was 21 years old, 
and had become involved in drugs and gang violence. Before his death, he 
expressed deep remorse for killing Patel and, ironically, found that he was 
able to turn his life around on death row, where he stopped a fellow-inmate's 
assault on a guard, prevented a suicide, and mentored troubled youth outside 
the prison walls. In a testimonial video recorded before his execution, he 
notes that coming to death row might have saved him from gang violence: "I'm 
actually happy I came here first, because the person I am today, I'm really, 
really satisfied with," he said. Moments later, he became the 8th person Texas 
has put to death this year by lethal injection, and the 553rd it has executed 
since Gregg v. Georgia.

And still the state continues. This past Wednesday, Texas executed Troy Clark; 
the next day, Daniel Acker. Both had consistently insisted that they were 
innocent of the murders for which they'd been sentenced to death. Clark's case, 
in particular, has drawn the attention of Sister Helen, who recently noted on 
Twitter that Clark's girlfriend confessed in detail to her part in the crime 
but recanted during the trial in exchange for a reduced sentence. Prejean has 
also described the tragedy of Clark's upbringing, the poverty that frayed both 
his future and his chance at a fair trial - a theme that echoes in her book. 
"Capital punishment, as practiced in the United States, is a poor man's 
punishment," she writes in "Dead Man Walking." "It is overwhelmingly poor 
people, who kill whites, who are sentenced to die."

In this sense, America has not much changed. Now, as before, there are no rich 
men on death row. Moreover, in the past 25 years, it has become increasingly 
apparent that, while much of the country has evolved beyond the death penalty, 
the states that remain most committed to it are those that once practiced 
slavery. Both traditions flow from a fundamental lie: that some people are not 
human enough to make a legal claim on their own lives. There is no other logic 
to the death penalty as we administer it. The prosecution seeks the death 
penalty when it serves them, and agrees to a plea deal when the accused can 
afford a lawyer who can make the trial sufficiently complex. Justice barely 
factors into the equation.

Capital Punishment

It is morally easy to feel outrage when the state executes the innocent and the 
remorseful. But Prejean's challenge, in "Dead Man Walking," is to recognize the 
horror of executing any person, even one who is difficult to love. 6 months 
after the execution of Sonnier, Prejean decides to become a spiritual adviser 
to another death-row inmate, Robert Lee Willie - a man who is not only guilty 
of his crime but refuses to accept his part in it, blaming his accomplice, the 
justice system, and even the victims themselves. In television interviews, he 
declares himself a member of a white-supremacy group and a follower of Hitler. 
And yet Sister Helen is compelled to recognize his loneliness, his terror, and 
his humanity. At his execution, she forces herself to keep her eyes open, to 
not look away.

"If we believe that murder is wrong and not admissable in our society, then it 
has to be wrong for everyone," Prejean writes, "not just individuals but 
governments as well." In the quarter-century since the publication of "Dead Man 
Walking," the evidence remains unchanged: executions do not prevent crime, and 
taking another person's life is a poor cure for inconsolable grief. Killing is 
always a moral crime, if not always a legal one. Near the end of her memoir, 
Sister Helen states her conviction that if executions were made public - if 
more people knew the truth of the act - "the torture and violence would be 
unmasked, and we would be shamed into abolishing executions." "Dead Man 
Walking" pulled back that mask. We cannot close our eyes. We must not look 
away.

(source: The New Yorker)

**************************

Architects designing for prisons confront ethical questions



The number of prisons in the U.S. has exploded from nearly 500 in the 1970s to 
almost 2,000 today, becoming a source of business for the architects who design 
them. But some in the profession are urging fellow architects to stop designing 
solitary confinement units in prison, saying that doing so perpetuates human 
rights abuses. NewsHour Weekend Special Correspondent David Tereshchuk reports.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

California-based architect Raphael Sperry has mounted a campaign. He wants his 
fellow-architects to stop designing solitary confinement units in prisons - and 
execution chambers, too.

RAPHAEL SPERRY:

If you're hiring an AIA architect, we are like the best. We're committed to the 
highest standard...

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Practically speaking, for an architect the chance to design a new execution 
chamber occurs very rarely. But given the nation's continuing boom in 
prison-construction, there are plenty of solitary confinement units to be 
designed and built. As Sperry barnstorms through design schools and 
architecture firms' offices, he argues for re-writing the profession's Code of 
Ethics - in effect to outlaw work on designing solitary units.

RAPHAEL SPERRY, ARCHITECT:

Architects should not design spaces for solitary confinement. It's a form of 
torture that's recognized by the entire international human rights community. 
We're enabling and frankly participating in human rights abuse.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Sperry's efforts to get architects out of designing for solitary are gaining 
traction among the profession's grass-roots.

KAI:

Individually it doesn't make a difference but as a profession, as a whole, we 
can start saying 'no, we're not going to take part in that.'

ADRIENNE:

We are interested in bettering our communities and how can you do that when 
you're when you're putting people in small boxes and not giving them access to 
daylight

ZOE:

The best way to do it is to just not do it.

DAVID TERESHCHUK, SPECIAL CORRESPONDENT, PHILADELPHIA, PA:

America's use of solitary confinement in effect started here at Eastern State 
Penitentiary of Pennsylvania in 1829. A British architect won a $100 for his 
design. And the basic operating principle was that solitude would enable 
prisoners to get regretful and "penitent" about their crime – hence the word 
"Penitentiary".

Against a background of grim prison conditions, Pennsylvania's early 
19th-century Quakers saw introducing solitary confinement as a way to reform.

SEAN KELLEY:

They believed that if you put people in solitary confinement long enough, 
people would look into their hearts and they would find their inner goodness, 
their inner light and they would behave themselves.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Sean Kelley works for the Penitentiary - nowadays effectively a museum of 
incarceration - on interpreting its historical and social significance.

SEAN KELLEY, SENIOR VICE PRESIDENT, EASTERN STATE PENITENTIARY HISTORIC SITE:

The prisoners would live inside the cells and they'd do some kind of simple 
work in the cell. They would make shoes or weave or make furniture. The 
prisoners would go out a little door into their own exercise yard, about the 
same size as the cell itself, that opened to the sky, and that was their world. 
Those 2 spaces: the cell for 23 hours a day, the exercise yard for one. No 
visitors, nothing to read aside from the Bible. Silence.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

2 centuries later, psychiatric studies repeatedly find that prolonged solitary 
confinement can lead to profound mental disorders. Eastern State Penitentiary 
discovered that early on. It eventually gave up being a purely solitary 
institution after 85 years. And it eventually closed down completely as a 
prison in the 1970s.

SEAN KELLEY:

The great lesson of Eastern State turned out to be that solitary confinement 
did not rehabilitate people. There's debate about how damaging it was but wide 
agreement that it was damaging.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

But throughout the nation's prison systems today, solitary remains in regular 
use - in theory, mainly for a difficulty minority of prisoners, the 
badly-behaved, and sometimes to protect inmates who'd be at risk among the 
general population. Nevertheless, modern-day reformers increasingly argue that 
solitary is now vastly over-used, and all too often it continues for 
unacceptably lengthy periods - even many years in some cases. Such alleged 
over-use, which gets publicly reported only rarely, is what's galvanizing 
concerned architects like Sperry.

RAPHAEL SPERRY:

Even though solitary confinement is a really common practice in the United 
States; there's 80,000 people in solitary confinement, almost as many as 
licensed architects as we have. The number of Americans who know that fact is 
very, very small because it's a practice that's done to prisoners who are 
already neglected and discarded bunch of people.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

There is a body of opinion among architects, though, that does not object to 
designing solitary confinement units.

JIM MUELLER:

Solitary confinement and maximum, maximum security confinements are necessary 
under certain very, very distinct circumstances

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Jim Mueller has designed many prisons over decades, including solitary units. 
The firm he recently retired from is among the world leaders of what the trade 
calls 'justice' architecture. He believes their expertise as architects has 
brought a more humane approach to solitary confinement.

JIM MUELLER, ARCHITECT:

It's better that we do it than not do it because I'm worrisome about who would 
do it in the absence of architects doing it.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Architecture is a commercial enterprise, of course - and designing prisons is 
good for business. There's been an almost 4-fold increase in the number of 
state and federal prisons from 500 in the 1970s to nearly 2,000 now. And if an 
architectural practice turned down such work on grounds of conscience or 
ethics, they could end up at a competitive disadvantage, according to Mueller.

JIM MUELLER:

The justice environment is a competitive business. They have to allow us to 
compete. But it would be very doubtful that they would select us.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

So if solitary confinement remains embedded in the business of prison design, 
can architects balance the demands of their clients, the prison authorities, 
with their own efforts to be humane? Beverly Prior is another California-based 
architect who's designed for many different kinds of detention.

BEVERLY PRIOR:

I feel like I'm responsible not just to the owner that is planning to do this 
facility but I'm also responsible to the greater community. I also have a 
guiding principle around wanting the environment to be healthy not only for the 
inmates that are there but also for the staff that work there.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

Prior accepts solitary confinement as necessary but she prefers it should make 
up only a small element of any facility she designs, like this unit she's 
working on for Santa Clara County.

BEVERLY PRIOR, ARCHITECT:

It's more like a time-out type of situation. They have observation into the 
cells. They have an exterior wall where all the cells are able to get light in 
from the outside as well as views out. And that's one of the driving principles 
these days for health, is to have the long views to experience daylight, to 
experience sunlight.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

But the basic dispute persists - no matter how humane some architects try to 
make their designs. Should architects ever design for solitary confinement at 
all? Feelings have run high.

JIM MUELLER:

People invaded our office and sprayed paint across all of desks and throughout 
that office. So it was very, very destructive and disruptive. But it did not 
deter us.

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

The American Institute of Architects, or AIA, has so far resisted any 
substantial overhaul to its Code of Ethics.

The AIA told the NewsHour Weekend that their Code already has a provision that 
applies generally to work on prisons. It's a "Standard", not an enforceable 
"Rule", and it says: "Members should employ their professional knowledge and 
skill to design buildings and spaces that will enhance and facilitate human 
dignity - and the health, safety, and welfare of the individual and the 
public."

DAVID TERESHCHUK:

But Sperry still presses his case, hoping this Fall to win over local chapters 
of the Institute, ahead of next year's national AIA conference. He and his 
supporters feel they're gaining ground.

RAPHAEL SPERRY:

Yeah, AIA has not come all the way around, but they started to come around. I 
think it just takes them a while to accept some difficult facts about the 
criminal justice system that they really haven't paid attention to in the past. 
Once they do that, they'll know what the right thing to do is.

(source: pbs.org)